


A Life in Your Shape

by melchixr



Series: A Life in Your Shape [1]
Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1990s, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Angst, Boarding School, Bullying, Coming Out, Cussing, Ernst and the gang all go to some pretentious New England boarding school, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hanschen is the new kid, Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Repression, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Yearning, lots and lots of pining and confusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2019-10-08 16:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 33
Words: 55,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17390153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melchixr/pseuds/melchixr
Summary: He pulled my arm back more before letting go of my hand and whispering in a voice that I would be unable to hear if he wasn’t pressed against me. “Now throw it, Ernst.”The rock definitely flew. Not as far or as gracefully as Hanschen’s had, but it skimmed the water like his. I held my breath and counted, one, two, three skips across the surface before it slipped beneath the water.“See. I told you that you would remember.”When Hanschen stepped away, I felt an odd sense of emptiness. Like I felt better when he was there, guiding my body like his own. I stumbled a bit to catch myself before I tried to lean back into his touch. Hanschen laughed a quiet laugh from behind me. “But you must’ve forgotten how to stand in the process.”-Title From the song 'Strawberry Blond' by Mitski-





	1. Chapter 1

My room was silent the entire morning. I woke up to the silence that lasted throughout the morning and almost till noon. And the silence would have stayed if the hurricane didn’t enter.

Mom didn’t even bother knocking when she came in, shattering the sunlit silence that I had revealed in all morning. She’s a stream of rushed sentences and loose curls turned blond from hours in tha garden. Everything she said as the rummaged around my room were variations of “Do you know how late it is?” and “Get up.” and “Where did you put…”

I didn’t respond. Just watched from my bed, not moving as to not set off the symphony of creaks from my mattress, overflowing with old springs. Her ring of destruction travelled around the room, picking up plates of leftover food and kicking around the pile of clothes I had dumped onto my rug late last night in a half awake haze. “Is this what you’re gonna pack, Ernst?”

Finally, I speak.”Yeah. That’s what I was planning.” My voice is rough and deep, so deep that Mom looks at me with wide eyes. I cough a few times, swallowing a few more before continuing. “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

My voice is still drowsy and coarse, but it’s enough like my usual lilt that she shrugs and stops looking at me like I killed her son and I’m wearing his skin. Instead, she reaches under my metal bed frame and pulls out the huge brown suitcase that I hadn’t touched since I got home in June. She tossed it onto the bed beside me and I could see written across the front in large sharpie-scribble letters ‘ERNIE’.

I had tried to scrub off the since retired nickname a few times, but I never managed to wash away my nine year-old handwriting.

And whenever I suggested to Mom that I get another, she would look at me with her big doe-eyes. That is, before letting me know that it belonged to her father’s father and acting like if I got anything from this century, I would tear our family apart from the seams.

That’s how she felt about the whole house. Every dust covered chandelier and out of tune piano key was a cherished memory from some old relative with some old name. I think she feared letting anything under twenty years old through our creaky front door.

She loved old things so much, she named me after her father, who was named after his father, who was named after his. Sentimentality is great when someone isn’t stuck with your sentimentalism for the rest of their lives.

But I pushed aside the suitcase and watched as she left in the storm she entered in.

I didn’t look at the suitcase again until I was watching it be loaded on by some poor Amtrak employee. But he disappeared behind Mom’s shoulder when she pulled me down into another hug. Even though I was almost a foot taller than her, the insisted on kissing my head over and over again like if she didn’t, I’d forget what it felt like.

“Alright, call me when you get to the airport. Also, call me tonight. Tell me how it goes after you get things settled.” She said between pecks and smiles.  “Try hard in your classes, alright. Don’t let senioritis kick in too fast.”

“Sure, Mom,” I sighed and buried my face in her shoulder again. Even with my back twisted and bent over, it was comforting as I breathed in the smell laundry detergent and dust. She was the only familiar thing under the train station’s fluorescent lights. “Sure….” I mutter again and feel the warm cotton of her blouse against my cheek.

“Go find your seat, Ernst,” She whispered, kissing my temple a few times before pushing me back to my standing position. She stared up at me, examining my face. Her eyes, wide and green, looked me over like I was a math equation. Like she couldn’t understand how the freckles formed all over my face or what purpose the little space between my front teeth served.

“I’m gonna miss you so much, Honey-Bee. The house is gonna be so quiet without you.”

“The house is quiet with me in it.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek and looked at me with raised brows. “It’s gonna be even more quiet, smart ass.”

I kissed her forehead like she had kissed mine and sighed. “Just get another kid.”

Mom laughed an unamused laugh and tried to straighten the wrinkled sleeve of my tee shirt. “I think I’ll learn to live with it. Now go find your seat.”

A few more kisses and a handful of goodbyes later and I climbed aboard the train. My seat was against the window, facing the station where I could spot Mom. She waved like a maniac from the moment she saw me, smiling and blowing kisses.

I waved back, letting myself smile back. My smile is just like her’s. Same dimples, same lips. But mine is just a duller and sadder version of her’s. Like my smile was trying desperately to copy her smile but couldn’t quite get the same shine.

She kept on waving and kissing and smiling until we left, until she was a little dot of blond and smiles.

“Was that your sister?”

I looked over at the seat across from me. It was an old woman with straight grey hair falling flat around her face. She sat like me, against the window with no one beside her. And hidden in her large purple coat, she looked at me with beady eyes.

I shook my head, looking at the empty seat beside her instead of at her directly. “No. She’s my Mom.”

“My God! How young was she when she had you!” She laughed

“ Pretty young,” I turned back to the window to watch Randolph disappear behind us. The small town was unfamiliar to me. We had been living outside of it for the past seventeen years of my life, but I only knew it as the place where Mom went grocery shopping and where everyone knew everyone but me.

If I did to take my bike into town, it was a twenty minute ride. The first ten minutes were just an attempt to get down our road, a long and poorly managed strip of asphalt with no houses besides our own at the very end. Mom says when she lived there when she was my age, they had neighbors. But as time passed, the families that lived in old houses like our own moved out and their houses were bought and destroyed to make fields just beyond the row of maple trees.

When I finally did get into town, they’d stare at me. I was a stranger. Everyone from the bums on the corners to the plumbers to the teachers knew each other. And they didn’t know me.

Even the kids my age, on their bikes or in their cars blaring music, stared at me. The lanky kid riding around their aimless town. The stranger in a town no other stranger bothered to enter.

I stopped trying to go after a while. At least the old house knew me.

“You go to Faraday, don’t you?”

The old women was now looking at the seat beside me at my backpack. Overpriced but beat up, Mom bought it for me when I was first accepted to Faraday. It was any old backpack, the only difference being the patch of the blue and gold crest on the front pocket.

“Yeah, I do.”

“You must be awfully smart then,” She looked me over like I was going into a job interview. “Or awfully rich.”

I shook my head. “Not rich. Just smart.”

That was Faraday. The closer you got to Vermont, the more people would recognize you as a student. Where I was, middle of nowhere Northern California, not many people would notice the crest. Those who did know it knew it well, like her. They pointed it out like it was a secret code, only those well versed in the intelligentsia of New England knew about Faraday.

Accept when you cross the line into Vermont. Then, everyone knew who you were and where you went. The crest meant you were in the upper crust. It meant that you were gonna be a big deal one day whether you liked it or not. It also meant that you were probably going to get away with a lot of shit.

“So what are your plans?” She asked. I wonder why she bothered. The average answer from a Faraday boy would be politician or doctor or lawyer or engineer or maybe all four.

But I shrugged off their answers and replied, “I’d like to be an artist.”

She didn’t say anything, just laughed a loud, harsh laugh. Finally, she turned back to the newspaper in her lap.

Thanks a lot, lady. Means the world.


	2. Chapter 2

The worst part about the dorms were the longer you had to walk the older you got. When I was a freshman and I first got to Faraday, my room wasn’t even ten feet from the front door. My sophomore year it was a short walk to the second floor and my junior year it was a workout to get to the third floor.

Now, threatening Chancey Hall was my home. While all the other boys bunked in the hulking, brick Iley Building just a minute long walk from the main courtyard, the dwindling population of seniors were stuck in the back of the campus. Chancey behind Iley, a single stone path being the only thing that lead to what just looked like a huge, white house. Something in a rich suburb somewhere meant for a couple with a hundred kids.

The only good thing about being so far from the rest of the school was distance from all the underclassmen, their parents clogging up the parking lot and their gaggle of siblings wandering around. Out here, it was just the boys I had known my entire life.

The second I stepped foot into the lobby, I was met with the shouts and greetings of a dozen familiar voices.

“Ernst!” Georg’s voice rose above the others. “We were just talking about you!”

“What about me?” I set down the ERNIE suitcase, being careful to turn the writing away from the crowd of boys. Fifteen or sixteen boys had managed to cram themselves into the couches set up around the room. Those few who couldn’t fit sat on the ground on the rug probably worth more than I was. Those who weren’t in the apparent welcoming club were busy walking up and down the hall, unpacking and chatting.

Georg slid off of the arm of one of the couches, approaching with open arms. “Wondering what you did in bum-fuck California all summer.”

“Everything there is to do in Bum-Fuck, USA,” I was brought into a tight hug. “Absolutely nothing.”

“I forgot how tall you were, Robel!” He hummed. Standing straight, he still only came up to my chin. We had all hoped for his sake that he would have a last minute summer growth spurt.

Our prays must’ve failed.

“How many of us are left?” I managed to raise my voice enough for the others to hear.

Andrew Hein was quick to respond. “ Forty-five. That’s eleven less than last year.”

“Cause five of ‘em got accepted to college early,” Charlie Downsworth was quick to add on. The poor little guy was crammed in the couch between two rugby players. About a second away from asphyxiating, he stammered. “Fuck those assholes."

I looked on the group, noting that two staples of the group, Nathan and Troy were missing. All of us had been together since freshman year. But as the years climbed on, more boys fell behind in grades or lost their scholarships or ran out of money if they weren’t part of those lucky five. Slowly, our class had shrunk to half of its original size. Now,  less than half of our original size, we were the elite, the cream of the crop.

And they acted like it too.

The boys were all sprawled across lobby, making the most of their last moments of leisure before classes came tomorrow. They laugh, reviewing their summers on top of each other. Between stories of girls, drinking, and acting like idiots, no one could hear themselves think.

That was, until one of the parents helping their child unpack came through the door. Then the silence was deafening.

Gotta keep up reputations. No one wants to be called to the Dean’s office on the first day.

When Max Reed’s mom exited with a glare and the sound started up again, I escaped down the hallway. Found my plain dorm with a plain door at the end of plain hallway. Everything looked like someone had muted the colors of a normal house and made all the walls thicker and a bit more modern than the rest of the campus.

But thank God it wasn’t on the second floor.

When I opened the door, I saw one of the two beds was already made. In fact, the entire left side of the room was set up. Made up of plain cream-colored walls and huge windows facing the distant town of St. Andrew’s that Faraday loomed over, the room was perfectly symmetrical. Two wardrobes side by side in the center of the room, two beds up against opposite walls, two desks beside them and two dressers on either side of the door.

Except the right side was entirely barren. On the left side, the personal belongings of a mystery roommate were still being set up. Books, clothes and toiletries still looking for a home were scattered about. But nothing touched the pristine right side.

My luggage ruined the sterile environment. But, knowing me, it was still the cleanest and most organized it would be all year.

I couldn’t do anything else but set things down before the door was unlocked behind me. When I turned, I saw the owner of the left side of the room. I held back a gasp to see it was Moritz Stiefel.

But then I snickered, remembering that it meant that Melchior lost the bet.

There had been a running joke for as long as I had been going to Faraday, the joke that Moritz wouldn’t make it past any given semester. We were all shocked to see him in classes the first day of freshman year, watching him fall behind almost immediately. We assumed that maybe his parents were some important people or maybe he faked his applications. There was a collective shock when he returned after winter break.

There was speculation that maybe the admin got bribed to keep him. And the rumors got worse and worse every year after that. This year Melchior put down twenty bucks that he wouldn’t come back after summer. That the error in the system would be worked out and he’d be kicked out.

And now, he was  back and he was my roommate.

“Oh, hey, uh…” Moritz looked at me with big, frightened eyes. He stopped dead in the doorway, like he was afraid that I was going to turn back and tell him to get out. Behind him, a much smaller figure tried to peak over one of his narrow shoulders.

I took a step towards him, but not too fast out of fear he’d run like a scared dog. Or maybe attack.  “Hey, Moritz. It’s good to see you back.” I reached out a hand for him to shake. He just stared blankly for a few seconds before reaching out and taking it. Now I could see that it was a girl our age standing behind him politely.

A girl in OUR dorms. I nearly fainted at the sight. She smiled sweetly, all doe-eyed and blushing. She looked sweet, a girl from a fairytale that was just in my dorm room. And with Moritz Stiefel of all people.

“Yeah, hey uh….”

He stared at me for a moment or so before I cut in with a sympathetic smile. “My name’s Ernst. We had physics together last year.”

“God, yes, Ernst!” He shouted suddenly. “I’m so sorry. I’m not sure how I forgot!” He stumbled to fully reveal the girl behind him, in her button nosed and curly haired glory. “This is my cousin, Wendla. She’s just trying to help me get organized.”

I shook Wendla’s hand, muttering the polite “Nice to meet ya”s to each other. I gestured to the mess of Moritz’s personal items scattered around his side. “You’re here to help organize?”

“I have the afternoon to try to get things ready,” She said, her voice light and soft.

Wendla stepped past us and approached Moritz's desk and the piles of book finding a temporary home there. I looked between the two, wondering how the hell THEY could be related.

Sure, they looked the same in theory. But Moritz’s curls looked like if Wendla’s curls were electrocuted and slept on and haven’t seen a brush in seventeen years. And while Wendla’s pale skin was tinted pink all over, Moritz was deathly white with sickly yellow.

The biggest difference between the two was the eyes. Wendla’s eyes were so bright and blue. I couldn’t be completely sure what Moritz’s eyes were. They were sunken do deep in his head with dark bags that had been under his eyes since we were thirteen.

I could have stared longer, looking even weirder than I did now, if the door didn’t open again. It almost hit Moritz, who was still standing in front of the door looking like a lost kid.

“Ernst, you lucky shit got a room on the first floor!” Melchior’s voice broke through the uncomfortable bedroom. He stood there, his long body taking up the whole doorway. Wherever he went, he demanded attention and this was no different, leaning against the doorframe and smiling in on me. Georg stood beside him, grinning like the shitty sibling watching your parent yell at you. Or an off brand Team Rocket. “I’ve been dragging my shit up and down the stairs all day.”

“It’s nice to see you too, Melchi,” I replied as he walked in, swaggering about like he owned the entire Iley Building. He, like Georg, brought me into a tight huge, slapping my back a bit harder than what would have been pleasant. “How was your break?”

He shook his head, the wavy brown hair that all the girls dawned over bouncing and whipping around. “Not here. Come out to the cove with us.”

“When?”

“Now!” Georg called from the door. They had been planning this ambush.

I looked over to Moritz, who was statuelike in the corner of the room. He must’ve known Melchior. Everyone knew Melchior. The only reason people knew me was because they knew Melchior and considered me his plus one.

And if he knew Melchior, he feared him.

“I dunno, Melchi,” I sighed. “ Maybe in a bit. I need to unpack.”

“You have eight months to unpack. Come to the cove tonight.”

His eyes were wide, looking up at me expectantly. Like if I said no I’d just break his heart into a million pieces. “Fine, I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten.”

Melchior, triumphant, smiled at me his movie star smile and turned on his heel to leave. But before a step could be taken, he paused. 

His gaze was locked on Wendla, who had somehow silently walked around us and went to work organizing Moritz’s dressed. With her back to us, all that could be seen was her soft pink sundress and long brown curls that flowed past her shoulders.

But God, Melchior was enraptured.

“Come on, Mel,” Georg was looking down the hall, smiling like a madman. “Otto just got here and his haircut is horrific.”

Melchior, of course, ignored his sidekick. He instead took a step closer to Wendla, clearing his throat. When that didn’t grab her attention, he sighed out a wistful, “Please tell me that you’re the one moving in, Miss.”

Wendla turned, smiling like she had been expecting him. “No. I’m just the moving crew.”

“You’re an awfully cute moving crew.”

Wendla didn’t even blink. She just smiled an innocent smile and shook her head. “Thanks, but I have some work to do.”

And with that she turned away and went back to work, sorting through socks and uniform trousers.

Melchior was stopped there for a moment or so before he finally remembered himself and continued on his way out. Now, maybe, a bit more deflated.

“You’re friends with Melchior Gabor?” Moritz’s usually shrill and scratchy voice was now soft. Like even with the door closed, Melchior and Georg could still hear him.

“Yeah,” I opened up the suitcase, hold hinges creaking and begging to stay closed. “Just barely.”


	3. Chapter 3

If  I was good at anything. It was swimming. I could swim for hours without getting tired. When I was a kid and Mom would kick me out of the house, I would ride my bike to the public pool in Randolph and spend the day there, swimming laps and knowing that no one would try to talk to me. And part of me was glad that no one tried.

Now, I couldn’t swim in peace. Melchior and Georg refused to let me do a lap around the “Cove” without swimming after me. The pair seemed to find their only joys in life splashing me or grabbing my ankles and trying to pull me under.

Our freshman year, Melchior would race me around the “Cove”. Now, he was trying to drown me. He probably just got slower.

I gave up around the fifth of six time I was pulled under. Instead, after coming back to the surface, sputtering for air, I swung wildly.

“You jackasses are gonna get me killed,” I coughed and managed to land a punch on whoever was next to me. When I managed to push my hair from my eyes, I saw Georg snickering like a little girl. He was desperately trying to stay afloat, his pale body shining and reflecting like the moon under the water.

That’s why they called it Clear Cove. The water was so clear that you could see every detail beneath the surface. No distortion, it looked like there was nothing between you and the sand and pebbles.  It wasn’t really a cove though. More like a big pond. But not a cove.

But the nerds who pointed that out were told to shut up.

Melchior had gotten out of the water some time ago. Now, he was splayed out the sand, taking in the last few moments of sunlight. In the coming weeks, the sun would be gone and his golden skin would turn to a dull pink. But now, he clung to his summer tan with pride.

“How’s the shore?” I called, gliding over to Melchior. Georg followed, splashing after me gracelessly.

“Freezing,” Melchior responded before flipping over, now showing his sand coated back to the sunshine. I paused as I got to the shallows, looking over his long legs and broad shoulders, shoulder blades poking out like angel wings. Melchior was lean, but a sort of muscular lean. If you stared like I did, you could see the muscles beneath his smooth skin. His dusty, sand covered thighs were thick and strong from years of hiking and surfing every summer.

“What are you staring at?” Georg’s voice broke through my ears and made me shudder immediately. I looked over my shoulder to see his smug face, eyebrows raised in suspicion.

I was quick to splash Georg, hitting him square in the chest with the cold pond water. “I’m thinking, Georg. Heard of it?”

From the shore, Melchior chuckled, “Get fucked, Georg.”

The air is cold when we get out of the pond. Colder than the water. Summer was running away from us salt stop speeds. I made my way to my towel, which, in the fading sunlight, was camouflaged in the grass and sand.

“So,” Melchior called to us. He still hasn’t moved. “How was summer for you two?”

“Good,” I hummed and approached slowly, trying desperately to get the sand out of my converse. “Not much to do. I sat at home.”

“No girls?” Asked Georg as he struggled to pull on this tee shirt over his damp body.

I shook my head. “There are no girls for me to ask out around there-“

“Well I got a girl!”

Melchior suddenly turned over, looking up at Georg with disbelief. “You absolutely did not, Zirschnitz. You’re lying.”

“I’m not!” Georg came off a bit too defensive. “Why do you just assume I’m lying! I’m offended.”

Melchior rolled his eyes, looking up at me with raised eyebrows. “Sure, Georg. We believe you.” He picked up his own towel and began to dust the sand from his body, the orange of the setting sun making him look bronze. “What was her name?”

“Zoe!” Georg spat out. “She goes to the school down the street from my house. She came over after school and we…”

“She came over after school?” I asked. When he nodded, I went on. “After school during summer?”

“She goes to summer school!” He said after a panicked pause.

Melchior let out a sigh before putting on his shirt. “So you fucked her, Georg?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Like, sex, Georg?”

“Yep.”

“S-E-X. Are you sure you know what that is?”

Georg leaned down to hit Melchior in the back of the head. “Yeah, I do, asshole.”

Melchior looked up at me and laughed. And even though I couldn’t quite see his eyes in the diminishing light, I could tell it was a signal to laugh along. So I did, chuckling under my breath as Georg scoffed. “Fine. Whatever. Act like that, jackass.”

There was silence for a few moments as Georg and I found a seat on in the sand on either side of Melchior. Before us, the sun that had shone bright yellow all day was not a dark orange, sinking lower and lower in a pink and purple sky. Clouds coated the sky above us, dark blue blankets lined with orange.

“I’m hungry,” I hummed to myself after our sky-sticken silence. “I wish we didn’t skip dinner.”

“Ernst,” Melchior let out in a long breath. “You will have a thousand more dinners in your life. But many more hours will you spend out here, swimming under this sky?”

“It was our senior dinner, Melchi,” Georg said, still bitter. “Everyone else was there.”

“So all those other assholes have the memory of listening to Knochenbruch say the same speech and telling the same inspirational stories for the fourth time. Then, they get clapped at by a bunch of freshmen and sophomores who don’t know what’s coming and then eat their first out of three hundred mediocre meals.”

“And we get this,” I muttered. Then we went silent again. The silence between us was filled by the setting sun’s last moments of light and our bare feet digging into the sand. Our shadows, three black blobs, lay behind us on the ground, side by side, growing longer and longer.

We stayed there for a few more hours. Not frozen, and not silence. We continued on, telling stories of our summer and rubbing each other for more details. Melchior spent most of this time thrilling us with stories of his aunt’s house in Venice Beach and the girls who would come by his house daily begging him to drive down to the beach with them. It was like he lived in a porno.

Georg, on the other hand, spent his days skiing around the mountains of Colorado with his litter of siblings just as rich and smart as him.

When I was asked about my summer, all I could do was shrug. “Nothing. We painted our living room and my aunt came over for a week.”

I suppose that’s what happened when you’re an only child and don’t have the money to just fly across the country for a quick trip.

But their stories fill up the hours until the sun was completely gone and the stars were shining like little light bulbs. Well past curfew and long after we dried off completely.

Hopefully Moritz had the common courtesy to do what all good roommates do and said that I was in the bathroom or calling my Mom.

Thank God they’re lax with seniors.

So I didn’t have to sneak back in like I used to. After whispering goodbyes in to the other two in the now dark lobby, I stumbled down the hall.

With enough squinting, I found my door and nudged it open as slow as I could without waking up Moritz.

Too bad he was already awake when I found him, sat at his desk with his lamp being the only light in the room. After shuffling in awkwardly, I could hear him listening to music so faint that if I breathed too hard, I couldn’t hear. Bach or maybe some other old dead guy that I studied in music appreciation my sophomore year.

“Hey, Moritz,” I stuttered out when he snapped his head around to look at me. In the shadows, his eyes looked like two black holes.

“Where were you?”

“Nowhere,” I kicked off my shoes and got sand on our freshly vacuumed floors. I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but every time I looked over at him, he was staring at me.

“I told the RA that you were in the shower,” His voice was monotone as I got undressed. I could already feel the sunburn on my shoulders .

I nodded and dug through my still unpacked suitcase. “Thanks, Moritz. I owe you one.”

“Okay, so tell me where you went.”

“In the morning.”

“Right now.”

“Why are you up so late?”

He looked down at the desk. While the rest of his things were at least sort of organized thanks to Wendla, the desk was a mess of papers and notes filled with scribbled handwriting. “I didn’t do any of the summer reading for my gothic lit. class.”

“How much reading was there?”

“The entirety of Frankenstein,” he turned back to the mess on the desk. “I’ll be up for a while.”

“Then I’ll let you get to work, Moritz,” I shoved the suitcase back under my bed. I’ll unpack it eventually. “Don’t have any nightmares.”

“I won’t,” His voice was dull and sad. “I don’t think I’ll get the chance."

He went back to his Bach or Debussy or whoever. And he didn’t seem to have any headphones, so it was my lullaby as well.


	4. Chapter 4

“But if you pray all your sins are hooked upon the sky. Pray and the heathen lie will disappear…” Bowie’s ghostly voice reverberated through my headphones.  I prayed that no others could hear the heavy synthesizer over Knuppeldick waxing on and on about Macroeconomics. 

But that’s why kids sat in the back row. Even in our tiny class, no more than fifteen boys, the back row was meant for the kids who wanted to fuck off.

That’s why I chose the back. Cause I was on my fourth year in a row not getting caught listening to music in class and I wasn’t about to lose my record streak. 

“Prayers they hide the saddest view…” Bowie belted as I looked out the window. The second story class had a perfect view of the sports fields on the edge of campus, the baseball diamond and lacrosse field side by side. On them, tiny ant-like freshman ran laps in their dark blue Faraday tee shirts. The grass was the brightest green I’d ever seen, we’ll watered and maintained and as fake as the students who roamed it.

“Believing the strangest things, loving the alien…”

My attention was suddenly grabbed by a light flick to my cheek. I looked down to see, on my desk among the textbook and course packet, a small ball of lined paper no larger than my thumb.

“And your prayers they break the sky in two…”

Georg, who sat in front of me, was pretending very well to be paying attention to the blackboard. He turned to look at me after I tapped his shoulder. “Did you throw this at me?” I hissed so quietly that I couldn’t even hear it.

“Believing the strangest things, loving the alien…”

He gave me a concerned look, as if asking if I was going crazy, and shook his head.

“You pray til the break of dawn…”

I went to work unfolding the ball, revealing a little scrap piece of paper, just the corner from someone’s notebook. 

“Believing the strangest things, loving the alien…”

On it, in short, squat, capitalized handwriting, was simply: ‘YOU MIGHT WANNA TAKE OFF YOUR HEADPHONES’.

“And you'll believe you're loving the alien…”

I whipped my head around, looking for who it could be. But no one was looking at me. No one except Knuppeldick.

And Knuppeldick was coming at me with a fury.

“Mr. Robel!” She said, so loudly that I could hear it over the space-age instrumental. “What do you think you’re doing?”

So quickly that it hurt my ears, I pulled off the headphones so that they were dangling aimlessly around my neck. “Nothing, Ma’am!”

She was wordless as she held out her hand, demanding with her eyes that I hand over the Walkman.

And I did as she asked. Not enthusiastically, of course. My unruly hair had always been a headache, except when it came to hiding the thin metal of my headphones. In that case, my hair’s puffy half assed attempt at waves worked like the perfect cloaking device.

Until now I guess.

And as I watched her walk with my personal Bowie back to the front of the class, I looked around once more. This time, everyone was looking at me. 

I could name every kid in this class. Not just their names, but I could tell you where they sat at dinner, what their best classes were, who they hung out with, whether or not they thought Melchior was a complete jackass. I knew them all almost as well as I knew my Mom. We didn’t believe it when we were told our Freshman year that we would “become like brothers”.

But we were. Maybe brothers that didn’t completely like each other, but brothers nonetheless.

All except the new kid.

We hadn’t seen an unfamiliar face since sophomore year. That’s always around the time where people stop applying and the class starts shrinking instead of growing. Sophomore year is usually the last year that people try to get into Faraday before they accepted their fate.

And Faraday was KNOWN for not accepting anyone beyond that.

But this kid was a stranger. I first heard of him over breakfast on the first day, when a tight club of seniors were interrogating Gage Wilson about his roommate. They insisted that he must be mistaken, he can’t be new.

And yet, there he was in third period Macroeconomics. And in first period philosophy and in fifth period AP statistics and in seventh period German 4.

I still hadn’t heard him speak a week in. He faded into the back of most classes. But he was real smart. Like smarter than normal Faraday smart. Gage told us all about how he breezed through homework that would freeze any student in their tracks and how quickly he could do Gage’s Honors Physics work in his head.

He was almost as smart as Melchior. And he was two seats away from me in the back row, the row kids sit in to fuck off.

New Kid wasn’t looking at me though. He was hunched over his desk, scribbling notes like he was writing every word Knuppeldick said. He wore these black circle glasses that fell low, almost falling off of his nose.

A few strands of the golden blond hair that flopped carelessly to either side of his hair fell in front of him, bouncing with every word he wrote.

Fuck, I was staring.

I made myself look away. Back to Knuppeldick and her chart about labor demand. I had missed half of the notes.

I was still making up the notes at dinner time, trying to decipher Georg’s messy handwriting as he thrilled the table with the story of the dumbass freshman who got lost on the third floor. I just thanked God that he was done with lunch’s story about my ‘stunt’ in third period. 

“You shits are so lucky you’re not taking AP calculus,” Melchior groaned once the obligatory shitting-on-freshmen conversation ended. This immediately started the next bland conversation of each of the boys around the table one-upping each other about how intellectually challenging their classes are. Our motto should have been ‘Smart Guys Complaining About How Smart They Are’ instead of the lame ‘Aude Sapere’ that was written in gold on walls, shirts, signs, and everything else they could fit it on. 

In the middle of Otto Lammermeier and Thomas McHenry’s heated debate over whether or not Concepts of Engineering was a hard class or not, August Johnson turned to me.

“Here, Ernst,” He held out his hand, where another crumpled piece of paper sat. “I was told to pass this to you.”

I took it from Auggie, mumbling a thank you as I opened it.

In the same squat handwriting. “WANT TO BORROW MY NOTES?”

“Alright, who’s the fucking genius?”

Melchior looked up at me with a furrowed brow. “Ernst, what?”

I held up the note like a trophy from a hunt. “Who passed this to me?”

The boys sitting around the circular table looked at one another awkwardly. August pointed a finger at Georg. “He gave it to me.”

Georg pointed at Lucas Shawn, “ I got it from him.”

Lucas pointed at Andrew, “He handed it to me.”

After a few more steps of separation, it was decided that Thomas hadn’t gotten a good look at who gave it to him. 

“He was just walking by,” The boy with a thick mane of red hair defended himself. “I didn’t think it was that important.”

“Why? What’s it say?” Melchior tried to stand and peer at the note in my hand. But I tucked it away before he could, burying it in the pocket of my wrinkled uniform pants. 

“Nothing,” I lied and went back to Georg’s notebook. “Someone’s just fucking with me.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Who the fuck does that?” Melchior’s voice came out in grunts. He tumbled into the seat across from me, slamming his hands down on the ancient oak table. A some of the sticklers sitting around the library glared at them for a few seconds from their own seats among the shelves. But Melchior continued. “That’s my goddamn team!”   
I looked up from my stats textbook at Melchior, his skin shiny with sweat and his hair was pulled back by a thick cloth headband. He rested his forehead on the table between us and let out a long sigh. “So. Tryouts weren’t fun?”

Melchior didn’t move before he spoke. “No. It was fucking miserable.”

“No one’s any good?”

Melchior finally tugged himself up, sitting upright, tired. “They’re all garbage. Except that new kid. He tried out.”

“Oh… And-”

“He’s fucking amazing,” Melchior practically yelled. “Amazing at attacks. Dominated the scrimmage.” He suddenly deflated, his chest from beneath his ‘Faraday Lacrosse’ tee shirt seeming hallow. “On my own team. Scored seven goals in a twenty minute game.”

“Is that a lot?”

“Fuck yeah, that’s a lot!” He muttered. He didn’t stop to breathe for what felt like an hour as he rambled over how the team was falling apart and how none of the defenders can catch to save their lives and on and on. He had created a pillow from his balled up ‘Faraday Lacrosse’ jacket, M. GABOR embroidered on the breast below the crest and CAPTAIN across the back in bold letters. But now, he claimed he was too ashamed to wear it.

“They’re a bunch of idiots! Last year, we got to nationals! But as soon as Greg and Corey leave, I’m the ringleader of the worst fucking circus-”

“What’s his name?”

Melchior finally looked at me for the first time in the entire conversation.  Not past me. But at me. “Who?”

“The new kid. Your all star.”

Melchior scoffed the classic, rich kid scoff from every movie ever. “He’s just a show off.”

“But he’s the best one on the team?” I tucked my books into my bag, knowing that there was no way I could begin work again after this.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him,” He leaned back, defeated and crumpled in his seat. “And I dunno. His name is like… Riley or Rilein or something.”

“That’s his first name?”

“No. Last. I don’t care about his first name. Doesn’t matter.”

I went to push for more, but before I could, a whiny voice from behind Melchior grabbed my attention. “Hey, Ernst, do you know where my French textbook went?”

I looked up to see Moritz, in all of his sickly glory, lingering like a ghost. His gaze was cast down at the floor, puffs and mats of hair falling down over his face.  “No, sorry Moritz.” I said after a moment of two of recalling what our dorm looked like before I left to study. It was so chaotic in there I couldn’t focus. Pens and pencils made traps for bare feet, missing homework, clothes (dirty and clean), wrappers from the vending machines in the lobby. All of that but no French textbook.

Before Moritz could slump away, Melchior stood. His previous exhaustion was replaced with a coy grin. “How’s the year so far for ya, Moritz?”

Moritz froze, staring up at Melchior like an oncoming train. Sure Melchior was imposing, but most of that was just his height. I never thought that he was actually threatening. But Moritz’s face told me otherwise. “Fine!” He coughed out like the word was trying to crawl out of his lungs. “My classes are fine!”

Melchior could have been more malicious. But he held back, sighing wistfully. “ Any big plans after school, Mo?”

Moritz looked at me, as if pleading that I saved him. But when I did nothing, he let out a quick “No. I gotta go!”

And like that he was gone, vanishing in between the bookshelves and rows of students hard at work. He tripped over a chair before he could completely make it out of sight, but managed to catch himself just in time and rush off.

“You’re an asshole, Melchi.”

“How?” He turned back to me with a smile. He was reinvigorated by the confrontation. “I’m just asking him a question. Being friendly and such.”

“It’s Moritz, you knew the answer.” As I spoke, Melchior picked up his Faraday Lacrosse sports bag, obviously not listening to me. “Asking him is just rubbing it in.”

Melchior cast a grin over his shoulder and started out of the library, off to find someone else to torment. “Is it a crime to be friendly, Ernst? I didn’t know you were such a stick in the mud.”


	6. Chapter 6

The first time I woke up was because of the hands. They began at the back of my neck. Fingertips and knuckles against strands of hair. They move to my bare shoulders, fingernails grazing across skin. In the dark room I can’t see who it is, but I know it’s nothing dangerous. I’m safe. For some reason I can’t turn to look at them.  I stay laying on my side, the hands touching me like they’re keeping a secret there behind my back.

The disembodied hands are slow at first. They feel my back, my spine, touching me like my skin is made of light and glass and everything else that one should not touch. Two hands, ten fingers each make themselves known individually, ten small divots along the side of my stomach.

Somehow, the thick blankets I fell asleep wrapped up in are gone. I lay there bare, but not cold. Just like I just woke up, but I’m not tired. All I can feel are these hands. They work down my side, across my stomach, my calfs, my chest, thighs, arms, hands, hands, hands, hands.

When I really wake up, I feel like there’s a fist around my heart. I breathe in long, laboured breaths and realize there are no hands. The blankets are on me, holding onto me like vines. I then realized that I had sweat through my Faraday hoodie. But at least it’s still on.

Thank God.

When my breathing slows again, I can hear Moritz’s snore and I can see the red glare of his alarm clock casting shadows across the ceiling. It’s three in the morning.

But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I feared the hands would come back, maybe going farther this time. Or maybe my biggest fear was that I’d go back to sleep and they wouldn’t be there.

I felt wrong. Not like I had made a mistake. But like I had walked in on someone else’s reality.

Thankfully, I didn’t wake up Moritz as I turned on my desk lamp. I needed something to do to keep me calm, to keep me from losing my mind in the twin-sized bed.

By the time the sun came up, I had covered an entire sketchbook spread. Mostly with hands. Some reaching, some touching. I feel like I knew the ins and outs of every knuckle my pen scribbled.

The lines are wobbly and crooked. And they spill off of the pages, so much that they were even in the margins of my Macroeconomics notes. I tried my best to pay attention, writing down every word she said like they were gospel. But my writing had also become crooked, looking more like doodles than letters.

But by the end of the period, my eyes were slipping closed and sending me in and out of sleep. Knuppeldick’s dull voice was like white noise, only being broken by the chime of the bell.

Then I heard the shuffling and muttering of my classmates getting up and walking out to lunch. They spoke in subdued voices about the banal lesson and their even more banal lives.

The energy I needed to get up would come to me eventually.

“You got all the notes, right?”

My head snapped up to see the New Kid, standing above me with his books tucked under his arm like a schoolboy watching animals at the zoo. His eyebrows raised and mouth curved into a pink lipped smile.

“Yeah, uhhh….” I fumbled to rip the page from my spiral-bound notebook. “It’s bad, but you can have ‘em if you need ‘em.”

He took the paper from me with a grateful nod. “Thanks. Are you gonna come to lunch?”

Only then did I notice that no one else was in the room besides me and the beaming New Kid. He’s all sorts of gold, from his tanned skin to his hair, the color of an angel’s hair in one of the victorian paintings I had to write essays on the year before. He’s like a lit candle against the boring whites and greys of Knuppeldick’s classroom. I palmed around, collecting my things like a blind man. New Kid just watched, amused.

I must’ve been some experiment to him. He was observing me with joy.

“I’m glad you keep up with your notes. No one else does,” He followed close behind me. I didn’t know why I felt like all my limbs were too long and flying out in every direction. That’s just because I could tell New Kid was looking at me. “How can I get these back to you?”

“I’m in room 20 if you want to drop it off. First floor.”

He looked at me with dimples like craters in his face. “Okay, I’ll make sure to drop them off tonight. Thanks you so much, Ernst.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He knows my name. He knows my name and I don’t know his. I thought back to all the classes I had with him. All those classes and I never caught his name.

I never saw him around during breaks or during meals. I wouldn’t even know who to ask if I tried to figure out his name. Anyone who ever spoke about him just called him by the moniker of ‘The New Kid’.

I was starting to believe he didn’t have a name.

The New Kid, who was keeping up a good pace walking down the hallway. We arrived at the staircase, where boys from the third story classes flooded past us like fish in a stream. There, the New Kid stopped, not daring to try to cram himself in the middle of the various shouting and running teenage boys, hungry and horny all the time.

“My name’s Hanschen, just so you know. Or just Hans if you want.” It was like he could read my mind. Or maybe my silence and fearful eyes told the full story. “I know, it’s weird seeing a new face your senior year.”

Hanschen. Golden Hanschen. He fit the name so well.

“Yeah. I’ve been wondering why you transferred your sen-”

“What can I do to repay you?”

When I didn’t immediately respond, Hanschen held up the doodle filled page. “For this. What can I do in return?”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was flirting. Or maybe he was just more confident than anyone else I knew and that was throwing me off.

Well, besides Melchior. But Hanschen wasn’t an asshole about it.

“You don’t have to do anything…” The staircase and hallway was no empty, except for the few stragglers like us who didn’t care if the food ran out by the time they got across the courtyard. I expected Hanschen to try to leave now.

But instead, he kept smiling up at me.

“I have to repay you,” He stated like it had been carved into his DNA. Then, his face lit up, sparkling almost with joy. He reached down into his backpack, digging wildly through color coded binders and index cards. From beneath the glare of organization, he pulled a small book. Dark green and leatherbound, he handed it to me. “Here. I just finished it. It’s a good read.”

I recognized Whitman’s name beneath the silver ‘Leaves of Grass’ in almost indistinguishable cursive. I could recall reading aloud excerpts  and watching Nathan Fuller’s analysis presentation in English last year. But I didn’t know people actually read this bullshit outside of junior English.

“It’s fine, people borrow notes all the time. You don’t need to-”  
“Yeah but I want to,” He spoke so plainly, so confidently. I probably looked like some idiot, standing above him with an dumbfounded open mouth. He tapped a finger on the cover, “It’s pretty calming. Maybe it will lull you to sleep. I think you need it.”

Before I could even try to respond, Hanschen had turned and took off down the stairs two steps at a time.

I turned the book over and over in my hand, looking over the little marks and wear, fading the color around the corners. Like someone had read it over and over again.

I tucked it beneath my arm and walked down the stairs much slower than Hanschen had, debating whether or not to go to my afternoon classes or to go back to my dorm and catch up on sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

The walk to St. Andrews was a long one. When Faraday was built back when carriages were the only mode of transportation, St. Andrews was barely a few houses and a post office. Now it was more, not much more. A few blocks and a handful of overpriced restaurants and shops meant just for the rich Faraday boys. And even though we all though St. Andrews was just some little middle of nowhere town, we still spent every Saturday morning walking down to St. Andrews after breakfast.

Part of the reason we went down was to get out of the old, brick Faraday buildings. The other reason that was more common was for the girls.

The girls living in St. Andrews went to Trinity High, a tiny public school just a block away from the main street. Boys went there too, but for all we cared, the boys blended into the wallpaper.  A girl in St. Andrews couldn’t go out on a Saturday without being followed by a dozen Faraday boys. But of course, they were too socially inept from spending most of their teenage years around a bunch of boys, so they followed the girls from afar.

Because, according to melchior, the Trinity girls were really something. He seemed to have a hundred stories about every girl at Trinity, he had since our freshman year. But he always had a new one every time we walked down to the town.

“No no no, Amanda was the one with blond hair,” He corrected Georg, who was trying to get all the girls in order as we bounded down the narrow road into town. “I’m talking about Juliette. I’m sure you’ve seen her around, Georg. She’s real tall.”

“Like how tall?”

“Like five foot nine. Maybe five ten.”

“Oh. I’ve seen her.”

I cringed at their conversation, stuffing my hands into the pockets and taking a few more steps so I could be ahead of them. I think Melchior caught onto my attempts to get out of all the Trinity girl talk and took a few steps toward me.

“Hey, Ernie,” He muttered, his long body leaning over to whisper in my ear. “Take a look at who’s coming down.”

I turned back to see Moritz Stiefel behind Georg, about fifty feet up the hill. He was all wrapped up in the dark blue insulated Faraday jacket, a scarf wrapped tight around his neck like it was the middle of winter in early October.

Georg saw where we were looking and stopped walking, joining us in staring at Moritz as he wandered down the hill. Moritz looked up for a moment, noticed the three of us and quickly looked away.

“I don’t think it’s that cold,” Georg chuckled before kicking a few rocks and starting back down the hill before timid Moritz could catch up to us and awkwardly skirt around us.

When we got down into town, the streets were alive with our classmates. Huge packs of freshmen roamed the main street together, yelling their heads off. Spending a few weeks cooped up in the school was too much from them already. But they’d get used to the same people, same classes, same food eventually.

Around one of the store windows a group of ten or fifteen underclassmen gathered around, full or acne and cracking voices.

They crowded around Main Street Sweets, a tiny store that must’ve gotten a hundred percent of its income from weekends like this. The store was always crowded on Saturdays, but now the crowd was gathered around the window that usually had on display piles of taffy or candy bars available inside.

Today, the usual display was replaced with a large, shiny red bike. A sleek, brand new, Schwinn Searcher with more speeds than I could count.

“Main Street Sweets must be rolling in the dough, eh?” Georg mused from where we stood, a few feet away from the mob. “Enough to just give that away.”

“They’re not giving it away,” Melchior pointed to the large jar sitting next to the bike in the window. It was filled to the brim with what looked like little pieces of paper. But as the underclassman moved on to the next thing and we were able to step closer, I could see that they were actually tons of tiny origami birds. The kind that you learned to make in middle school when you were bored. “See. You have to go in to guess the number. Then, when you go in you’ll want to buy some candy. It’s a trap.”

He acted like he wasn’t completely willing to go in and waste all the money his mother sent him on milkshakes.

Melchior always acted like he was better that everything and anything. Especially everything in St. Andrews. If it were up to him, we’d walk through the place with our noses in the air and spend our day poking fun at the kids who liked the town.

That was, until we walked past the cafe.

Melchior stopped suddenly, staring through the wide window into the squat, brick building. It was like he had seen a ghost in the cozy coffee shop. We used to joke that the boys who took girls there on Saturday were the most arrogant, try-hard idiots attempting to seem like the epitome of intellectualism by buying a girl a five dollar coffee. But now, Melchior practically had his nose pressed to the glass.

“What is it, Melchi?”

He didn’t say a word to us, just charged into the building, the door swinging behind him and demanding that we follow.

“Hey, Moritz, what are you up to?” He almost yelled across the building, causing plenty of people to turn and stare. All the Faraday boys on dates blew it off like it was nothing.

Moritz sat in the corner of the room at a small table with what looked like just a long head of brown curls from behind. I didn’t know if Moritz had actually got a date or if I was going blind. But when the girl across from his turned to stare at Melchior, I could see that it was Wendla, the cousin from move-in day.

And she and Moritz were both staring at Melchior and his train of fools like we were a bunch of clowns about to put on a show.

If Melchior was aware of how they were staring, he didn’t show it. He bounded for Moritz and his cousin, long legs carrying him across the room in seconds. Even when he spoke to ‘Moritz’, he spoke in a performative way. Like he wanted everyone enjoying their coffee to listen to him. “My, Moritz. A chic little place for a first date, eh?”

He got what he wanted. Even the people trying to ignore him were watching because they knew Melchior Gabor was a trainwreck.

“N-No…” Moritz’s voice came out sickly and small. “This is my cousin, Wendla. Wendla, this is Melchior Gabo-”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Melchior,” He stood above them now, looming like a shitty ex boyfriend or maybe a ghost who doesn’t know exactly how to scare people. He held out a hand for Wendla to shake, staring at her like she was made of sunlight. “And these are my cohorts Georg and Ernst. Don’t mind them, they’re probably gay.”

“Hey!” Georg gasped indignantly. We were standing behind Melchior in a V formation  like he was the mean girl in a teen movie, so that was one point for ‘Sidekicks’ and a solid zero points for ‘Actual Friends’. But Melchior glared at us from over his shoulder and went back to Wendla, leaving Georg mumbling to himself.

I couldn’t fight back like Georg, just stared down at my shoes and felt like there was another fist around my heart. But that feeling faded away eventually, allowing my to focus back in on Melchior trying his best to speak to Wendla like he was a normal human and not a madman in ill-fitting khakis.

“But I can’t get too crazy on these Saturdays,” He leaned against the back of Moritz’s chair like he wasn’t even there. “See, I have lacrosse practice on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. But the Sunday practices ar the most rigorous. And, you see, as the team captain, I have to be doing my best so my team will follow. They really look up to me in that way, ya know-”

“Excuse me, Melchior. But don’t you have something to do?”

We all couldn’t help but stare at Moritz, looking down at his coffee with fists clenched on the table top. Melchior went silent as well, acknowledging him for the first time since we entered. And he had been talking long enough to forget that he even existed.

“No, Mor,” he attempted to chuckle it off, ignoring Wendla’s concerned looks. She looked a lot like my mother when she looked like that, all of her soft features becoming even softer. “I have all the time in the world to sit and talk to y-”

“I really think you have something to do, Melchior. Now.”

This was a demand. And even though Moritz didn’t raise his voice past the normal low-whine, it demanded both our attention and that we leave.

“Come on, Melchior, let’s get out of here,” I pushed Georg a bit, the two of us moving towards the door we came from. But even then, Melchior stayed put.

Thank God Georg and I got out of there before Moritz went on a killing spree with a mug of tea. But Melchior, either blind to the threat or felt like pushing his luck, held his place at the corner booth. If we actually were his sidekicks, at least we weren’t dumb ones.

But we had nowhere to go without our fearless leader. So we found our place leaning against the storefront of the deli across the street from Columbus Cafe, holding our breaths and praying that, if Melchior got his ass kicked, we’d be able to see from the window.

Faraday boys walked past us like we were nothing when we were without Melchior, barely even acknowledging our existence. It was almost nice, though, being alone. Finally, we could have a conversation that didn’t have to be a constant stream of one-liners and wit.

Not saying that the conversation wasn’t still idiotic. That was just who we were.

Georg had taken it upon himself to judge the girls who were walking past us. We sat there, sidewalk gargoyles, silently staring at anything with legs and tits that came past us. Then, as the girl would walk away, he would lean into me and comment. Mostly just a dull ‘She’s hot’ or ‘She’s got a nice chest’ or even an occasional ‘She looks like a slut’.

I added to his game every so often with a ‘She’s got nice hair’. But that always got me an eye roll and a scoff, so I let Georg do most of the talking.

He had his eyes on the red head girl ever since she rounded the corner, gliding past an old couple on a pair of roller skates effortlessly. Georg punched my arm as she came toward us, a stream of orange in a little yellow skirt. “Holy fuck, dude. Do you see that?”

I gave him a little nod and went back to watching her roll toward us leisurely.

“Hey, Sarah!”

The girl suddenly stopped, barely five feet away from us. Georg looked like he would faint if he could even get a sniff of her, and there she was, sliding back and forth as she waved at the pack of boys coming down the street. No dark blue, no khaki. All of the boys were dressed like normal St. Andrews boys and they were charging at the red head girl, and by extension, us.

“Thomas! Eddie! Hey guys!” As the five or six boys got closer, she gasped. “Hanschen, is that you? Where have you been?”

That’s when I snapped to attention, much like Georg. I looked through the pile of average looking, boring Trinity boys to see a familiar face among them. Without his glasses, I wouldn't have been able to recognize him without red head girl pointing him out to me.

But there he was, same blond hair, same dimpled smile. He nudged through the boys leading their gang and approached the girl with open arms.

He wasn’t in his Faraday uniform. He was in regular day clothes, a burgundy sweater and beat up jeans and dirt covered shoes that we would be killed for if we ever wore them anywhere near school campus.

One of the biggest rules at Faraday was that no matter what, wherever you go off campus, you wear your full uniform.

That means a pressed shirts, straightened ties, buttoned blazers, lint rolled sweaters, and absolutely no sleeves rolled up no matter what. Better than we were expected to dress during school hours, where most boys didn’t even bother to tuck in their shirts unless a certain teacher was being a hardass about it.

And there he was. Day clothes. Off campus in day clothes. Not even bothering to wear the Faraday pins that we were ordered to wear even in the hours were we were allowed to wear day clothes off campus.

Hanschen was practically unrecognizable.

He hugged the redhead girl, holding her close by her slim waist. The way he touched her was so gentle, like he was handling a small bird instead of a girl sliding about on roller skates.

“Hey, that’s New Kid, isn’t it?” Georg whispered, nodding his head towards Hanschen.

I tore my gaze away from Hanschen and nodded. “Yeah. I think it is.”

One of the boys with Hanschen had taken charge, putting his arm around the redhead and talking to her in big, animated, gesture. The other boys followed him as he talked to her, aimlessly wandering past our spot with Hanschen in the rear.

He looked up from the boys he was with for a moment to look around, first across the street, then over to Georg and I. Without thinking, my hand shot up in a little wave, probably too eager than I would have liked.

He stared at me for a moment, like I was doing some foreign ritual he had never seen before and before I could react, ran to catch up with his friends. Like I hadn’t even been there.

“What was that all about?” Melchior’s voice echoed down the busy street. He watched as the gang of boys and disappeared back around a corner. “Was that New Kid?”

“Yeah. I think it was,” Georg shrugged. “Must be from around here. How was your date, Melchi?”

Melchior gestured to us to follow him down the street, the opposite way that Hanschen and his friends had gone. “Not so good. Moritz had a bit of a hissy. It was almost impressive.” Georg started to follow our leader, order had been restored. “You know, that kid’s kinda funny.”

And I took up the rear, trying not to look over my shoulder as we moved in a tight bunch down the street.


	8. Chapter 8

The only other person watching the lacrosse practice besides me was Otto. He was on the team, but twisted his ankle the week before during running drills. So he sat next to me at the bottom of the bleachers, leg extended to the bench in front of us and making small talk. Mostly about how our classes and how cold the weather had gotten. Even in the middle of the afternoon, I shivered in my overpriced pullover emblazoned with Latin.

But the lacrosse team didn’t seem affected at all. They sprinted back and forth across the field in their shorts and tee shirts stating “Faraday Athletics” across the front.

“Robel!” Coach Sonnenstich’s voice came out of nowhere, making me realize that I had been staring at the players in a trance, watching them move in strong, fluid movements. He was a great, big man with a broad chest. “Nice to see you out here. Why didn’t you try out, bud?”

I cringed at the word ‘Bud’ but ignored it, rubbing my palms over my pants.”I just like to observe. I’ve been focusing more on academics.”

“You had a great mile time, Robel. Woulda been great on the team.”

I nod, trying to shake him off. He exuded testosterone with every loud, articulate word. “Too bad I haven’t ran since sophomore year.”

Sonnenstich shrugged, asking Otto how his ankle felt before there was a sudden collision on the field, followed by grunts and a few shouts.

There was a tangle of bodies on the field, an argument starting out in loud, accusatory tones. Melchior was in the middle of all of them, pointing his lacrosse stick to the chest of one of his teammates, a junior with a big, angry face. He yelled back at Melchior, ignoring the two boys laying in a pile on the ground.

“It was you, dumbfuck! You hit him!” Melchior’s voice rose above all the others. Of course it was him blaming others. “I swear to God, if you pull this shit during a game, I will bash your brains in on the fucking spot-”

The junior boy, bigger and broader than his team captain, placed one strong hand on Melchior’s chest and pushed him effortlessly, like Melchior weighed nothing.

Before the fight could escalate any more, Sonnenstich was charging towards them, demanding them to ‘break it up’. Right behind him was Otto, hobbling after him with a dumb grin, like he wanted to get some of the action. 

The physical dispute had stopped, but there were still shouts. Now, it was Melchior and the junior boy yelling at Sonnenstich attempting to tell their sides of the story, their teammates interjecting their opinions to defend whoever they decided to swear their loyalty to in that moment.

“They’re so petty, aren’t they?”

Hanschen had appeared like an apparition at my side, where Sonnenstich had been not even a minute ago. He had been on the other side of the field when the skirmish had began, I had been keeping my eye him, moving like a bullet back and forth like it was nothing.

But now that he was closer I could see that it had taken a toll on him. He breathed hard, skin shining with sweat that stuck strands of blond hair to his temples. As I replied, he leaned down to take a drink from his water bottle sitting at my feet.

“Yeah. You know what that was all about?” I asked, staring at the patch of grass between us, neatly trimmed and fake green. 

Between sips, Hanschen tried not to laugh. “It’s Melchior. He can fight about anything. He’s a walking temper.”

“Trust me, I know, I’ve spent the last four years with him.”

Hanschen went to work fixing the sweat soaked headband that held his hair up out of his glasses. For a moment, I kept my eyes on his arms, strong and defined against a Faraday shirt. He sorta looked like those ancient greek statues, but all the limbs intact.

Before I had gotten big enough to outgrow the nickname ‘Ernie’, I had a book filled with those statues. I would spend the whole day laying on my stomach, flipping through pages filled with marble and forever agape mouths. My favorite was always Bernini, who made stone look like silk and skin look like if you pressed your finger into it, it would bounce back. The sculpted men that lounged about draped effortlessly in cloth looked a lot like Hanschen. It was probably the angles of him, square jaw and prominent nose, like the stone he was made from hadn’t been completely filled down.

“Can you ride a bike, Ernst?”

“Why do you ask?”   
He shrugged, ignoring the boys still bickering like children on the field. “Is it a crime to ask questions?”

“No it’s not. So I can ask you why you want to know,” He smiled at me as I spoke, all cut grass and early mornings. Nothing I ever said seemed to phase him. “And yes. I can.”

He didn’t seem to mind the silence. When quiet came between us, all he did was smile. Like he was in some sort of dream and he didn’t care whether or not he woke up.

But I couldn’t stand them.

“Did you see me last weekend? I saw you with those guys and tried to-”

“What are you doing after dinner tomorrow?”

I looked up at him, but he didn’t seem phased at all. Like he had all thought this through before he even approached me. “Nothing,” I replied, “Homework, probably. I have a pretty big stats test on Friday that I need to cram for.”

“Can you take a break from the cramming for a bit and come down to the cove with me?”

He must have seen my surprised look, because he continued with a knowing smile. “You don’t have to be going here for four years to know that you all skip class to go to that dumb pond. You guys aren’t good at keeping it top secret.”

“Rilow! Come on!” Coach Sonnenstich’s voice broke through our conversation. “Break’s over!”

Hanschen looked over his shoulder, took one last long swig of water, and started back to the field. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, Ernst. Bring your bike, alright.”

“Wait, I don’t have a bi-”

“Borrow one!”

And he ran back to his team, who were all glaring at one another like children. Melchior, the ringleader of the whole affair, had been sent to sit in the grass on the other side of the field and pout. 

The rest of their practice was awkward, uncomfortable glances and fumbling around. 

I didn’t even sit through the rest of the practice. I had to get up, I had to walk around or else I felt like my heart would move up to my head and pound out of my ears. I was walking so fast I was practically running down the long path to Chancey. My face felt like it was made of hot coals and my limbs were two times too long. And I wish I could pin down why. Why my skin was covered in goosebumps and why my lips felt dry and flakey and why every inch of me felt slick with sweat even in the cold air. 

My breathing became more level when I arrived at the lobby, hoping the few boys who were enjoying their evening on the couches couldn’t tell I was in what felt like an inebriated state. 

I held my breath, ignoring it like how I ignored all bad dreams. When people want to be friends, they ask to hang out with you. That’s not something to have a heart attack about. 

I ignored it by burying myself in work, German worksheets, a philosophy essay, more stats questions than humanly possible. But not enough to drown out the thrumming in my head. 

Moritz coming in for the night didn’t even interrupt my stream of work, or make the blood in my cheeks leave. We made small talk, as we always did. About classes, about dinner, about the other boys. 

Still didn’t lose my forced focus.

The only thing that eventually did make me look away was a knock at the door. Only a few minutes before lights out, which reminded of how long I had been working exactly. 

Moritz would normally jump up and fling himself nervously to the door in a hurricane of missteps. But he was fast asleep, curled up into a tiny, Moritz shaped ball in his bed. 

Another knock and I pushed myself up from my desk. In the dim lamp-lit room, I stumbled over textbooks and piles of clothes in an attempt to make it to the door. 

No one was standing outside of the door. I didn’t think that was too weird though. Plenty of guys would knock on random doors as they walked to their room just to fuck with people. But when I went to close the door, I noticed the pieces of paper at my feet.

The first was familiar, a few pieces of doodled covered paper that I recognized as my Macroeconomics notes that I loaned to Hanschen the week before.

The second was also familiar. A folded bird, just like the ones in jar, but bigger. Big enough to write on the wings legibly. In short, capital letters, the bird’s pencil tattoo read ‘THANKS FOR THE NOTES. SEE YOU TOMORROW. 

PS- THOSE GUYS ARE JUST ACQUAINTANCES. DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT’


	9. Chapter 9

Georg’s bike was rusted and yellow, but it worked. It barely worked, but it worked. It’s must have been ten years old, maybe more, creaking and groaning with every move.

I let it lay beside me at the front of Chancey hall, it’s dull yellow collecting even more dirt and dents. The sun was already low in the sky, making the few small trees planted along the path to the main courtyard cast skinny shadows over cool grass. Boys, now changed into their casual, day-clothes, came and went. Some chatted on their way up to the tennis court, or to the library. Others wandered aimlessly in hopes to find something to do to kill time. 

But no one stopped to speak to me. Some waved or nodded, but none actually spoke to me on their way in and out of Chancey. 

The only person who spoke to me was Hanschen. He came racing down the path from the courtyard on a bike, flying in a blaze of blue. His sudden halt is only a few feet away from me, jolting Hanschen as he laughed. “Are you ready to go, Ernst?”

Hanschen always seemed to appear out of nowhere. He had barely been in my field of vision for a few seconds before he was looming over me on his shiny, new looking bike. And I knew he was prone to disappear just as fast. So I stood up, pulling Georg’s hand-me-down bike along with me. “Yeah. Sure.”

Hanschen didn’t hesitate. Even if I wanted to talk a bit longer, I wasn’t able to. Hanschen took off down the thin path around Chancey, giving me no time at all to get on my own bike and follow. By the time we started down the hill toward the cove, Hanschen was yards ahead of me.

“Slow down! Hanschen!” I called over the sound of wheels and pebbles. Hanschen cast a look over his shoulder, but didn’t slow. Just flashed me that big, open mouthed smile. Strands of blond hair whipped around his face wildly, the pieces that usually hung down over his forehead stuck up in the air like someone had spiked them.

I couldn’t look for too long. My bike skidded a bit, jolting me back to reality and forcing me to steer my ride once more. 

I couldn’t even try to keep up with Hanschen. He was like a flash, still in his school uniform but that didn’t hold him back at all. His sharp blazer snapped around behind him, unbuttoned and flapping around his waist.

I got to a point where I stopped trying to keep up with him. I just enjoyed following Hanschen from a distance. We passed a few boys coming up the hill from the cove, who were almost hit by Hanschen. The three, maybe sophomores or juniors, jumped aside after Hanschen demanded the right of way and glared as the two of us passed. I hoped my sorry shrug was enough of an apology because I didn’t hesitate either. The boys still stared as we passed.

The talk about Hanschen had settled since school started. Now, people knew who we was. Mostly because of lacrosse, the word of his skills had spread fast as soon as practices started. Everyone now knew that Hanschen Rilow was faster than anyone else and moved like he was made of water, an unstoppable force from one side of the field to the other.

They were probably staring because of me. Not seeing me following Melchior’s every move was odd, according to most of the students at Faraday. He was the only reason my name was known around the school.

But I was soaring down the hill with Hanschen Rilow, feeling like a God instead of slumping around behind Melchior Gabor. Must’ve been something to stare at.

The cove was empty when we got there. The cooling weather had become too much for boys who used the cove to swim, like I did. Now, it was just a cold puddle down the hill from the school where boys would go if campus got too boring. 

The smooth dirt and rock path we had travelled down became bumpy grass and sand that forced Hanschen to stop before he crashed. I stopped as well, walking the rest of the way to meet Hanschen. 

He was staring at the water with a little smile, barely acknowledging that I had approached him.

“What are you looking at?” I made my voice as quiet as possible, as to not shatter our silence completely. 

He didn’t take his eyes off of the water. “This is my favorite place on campus.” His voice was soft. It was like he was trying not to wake up the shore or the trees that surrounded us in a thin ring of red leafed maple trees and tall spruces that seemed to yearn to touch the darkening sky. “I like to come down here in the mornings, before class.”

“How early do you wake up then?”

“Early enough.”

He set down his bike and I did the same. He was wordlessly walked to the shore and I watched as he went to work picking up stones he found in the murky sand. He looked them over for a moment, flipping them in his hand over and over until he finally reeled his hand back and launched the rocks over the top of the water. They would skip for a while, sheer force carrying them across the shore before disappearing into ripples. 

I couldn’t explain why I watched him do this for some time. It was mesmerizing to watch Hanschen and his rocks over and over. Pick up, examine, throw, skip, repeat. It was like he was a machine built to launch these sand-smoothed pebbles over the waters as they began to reflect the sky changing colors. 

“Do you want this back?”

He finally looked at me, his seemingly endless rhythm of rock-skipping finally coming to a halt. In my hand, I held out the small, green book he had given me a couple weeks previously. He leaned over and took it from my hand, turning the copy of ‘Leaves of Grass’ in his hands like it was one of the rocks in the pond. But he, thankfully, didn’t throw it.

“Did you read it?

His smile was now gone. Looking at me with serene eyes. “Sure,” My voice felt rough and rushed. “I liked it. I never was really into poetry. I thought it was… I don’t know… Too…”

“Too flowery? To girly?”

His voice was rougher than before. Almost accusatory. I wish I didn’t have to agree, but when I thought on it for a few moments, I nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know. It’s not though.”

“So you liked it?”

“Yeah. I liked it a lot, actually. Thank you.”

Hanschen looked the book over, like he was seeing it for the first time, and sat in the sand. “You know, Ernst, when this book was first published people were outraged.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He patted the ground beside him, inviting me to join. I probably shouldn’t have been so eager, but I kicked up dirt in a rush to sit next to him. I crashed down beside him, a mess of limbs too long folding over each other as he continued. “When it first came out, people thought it was garbage. He was even fired from his job cause people thought it was offensive. It was too sexy.”

I couldn’t help but snicker and roll my eyes. “Oh yeah. Way too sexy. It was basically porn.”

Hanschen laughed a big, chest laugh that echoed across the cove, carried by the ripples and making leaves fall off of the trees.  “You want some more shit that made old guys really mad?”

I didn’t even respond before he stood, walking to his backpack that he threw down with his bike. He was like a walking library, handing me a paperback book, newer than Leaves of Grass, with an illustration of a snake on the cover. 

“Paradise Lost,” Hanschen read me the cover. “It’s kinda old. Really bible-y. But I haven’t read it yet. So don’t tell me the ending.”

“Why don’t you read it first?” I tried to hand it back to him. But Hanschen just put his hand out and pushed it back to me, pressing it to my chest. 

“No, Ernst. I want to read Whitman again. I have some new insights on it, you know?”

So I took the book, holding onto it like it was made of gold. Whatever new insights they were, they made Hanschen go back to his rocks. Pick up, examine, throw, skip, repeat.  He wandered up and down the shore aimlessly, discussing Whitman’s poems and how vaguely horny he was for nature. Hanschen knew the poems inside and out, making me feel like some sort of barely literate idiot. But he still smiled at me between tossing the rocks, making me believe for maybe a minute of two that I wasn’t completely incompetent. 

“Come here,” He interrupted our tiny spark of intelligent conversation with a wave of his hand. He Gestured at me again when I didn’t move, “Come here, Ernst. You know how to skip a rock, right?”

“I think I learned once. But I forgot.”

Hanschen stood over me, hands on his hips and eyes looking over me over and over again. Like he was sizing me up before he asked. “How do you forget how to skip rocks?”

I didn’t even think before I spoke, words tumbling out like an avalanche of busy-body memories. “There was a pond down the hill from my house and when I was little my grandpa taught me to skip stones.”

Hanschen kept looking me over. Now, I had seemed to pique his interest. He was looking at me like I was a book cover, like he was about to reach out and turn me over in his palm. “When did you move?”

“What?”

He never looked me in the eyes when he glanced over me. “You haven’t skipped-stones in so long that you’ve forgotten how. Did you move away from the pond?”

I shook my head. “No. After my grandpa died we stopped going down to the pond.”

He took a deep breath, looking around us like he was expecting someone to pop up over the hill or come out of the trees that surrounded our hideaway. Then, he extended a hand to me, palm up to the changing sky. “Come on. I’m sure you’ll remember how.”

Hanschen pulled me to my feet, which skidded and slid in the sand. He spent a few moments looking around at the ground and then, with the eye of a jeweler, picked up a stone that laid at his uniform shoes. “Here,” he brushed it off and handed it to me, pressing it into my palm with a hint of expertise. 

When I hesitated, Hanschen walked behind me. “Stand with your feet apart. One in front and one behind you.”

I took a step apart, but it wasn’t a big enough step judging by the fact that Hanschen kicked my feet to get me to take a wider stance. “It’s weird seeing you without your knees pressed together. I thought maybe your shoes were tied together. What’s your dominant hand?”

“I’m left handed.”

“Me too. Stand with your left hand farthest from the lake.”

“I know how to throw it!”

“I thought you forgot.”

Hanschen took a step back and with raised eyebrows, signalled me to go for it. I tossed the rock, trying to emulate what he had been doing, and failed immediately. Hanschen just laughed when the stone fell and splashed into the water a few feet from me. 

“Maybe I did forget…” Before I could try to shrink back, Hanschen was behind me again, pressing another stone into my hand. 

“Come on, Ernst,” He muttered. “You were almost there. You just need to think less toss and more glide.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Hanschen took a step closer to me. I could feel him now almost pressed against me. His arms lace beneath mine and one of his hands come up over mine. I always imagined Hanschen as this big, strong athlete. But now that he was close, I could feel his breath against my shoulder and realized that the top of his head barely came to my nose. His much smaller hand wrestled with an attempt to cover up my long, thin fingers and I couldn’t help but laugh. 

But he was confident, wrapping his fingers around mine and pulling my arm back with his.“It means you need to imagine the rock you’re holding soaring across the pond, barely touching the water’s surface. You need to see it just glide from your hand effortlessly. Once your mind sees that, your body will follow.”

He pulled my arm back more before letting go of my hand and whispering in a voice that I would be unable to hear if he wasn’t pressed against me. “Now throw it, Ernst.”

The rock definitely flew. Not as far or as gracefully as Hanschen’s had, but it skimmed the water like his. I held my breath and counted, one, two, three skips across the surface before it slipped beneath the water. 

“See. I told you that you would remember.”

When Hanschen stepped away, I felt an odd sense of emptiness. Like I felt better when he was there, guiding my body like his own. I stumbled a bit to catch myself before I tried to lean back into his touch. Hanschen laughed a quiet laugh from behind me. “But you must’ve forgotten how to stand in the process.”

When the sudden dizziness subsided, I found myself staring down at the water. On the shiny surface, I could see the colors of the sky. Oranges and dark blues faded together, only being interrupted by the occasional ripple and now, my long, daunting reflection. I look disfigured in the slight waves. The big, Roman nose I inherited from my mother seemed even bigger, hooked and ugly. The little moles and freckles that decorated my face seemed darker, like someone had attacked my face with sharpies. 

“I can’t believe you guys managed to keep this place a secret for so long,” Hanschen’s voice seemed to come from the back of my mind, like a memory. “I don’t know how long I’ve lived in St. Andrews and I never knew that this place existed.”

“Wait you live around here?”

Hanschen went quiet. I looked up to see that he had been standing beside me, staring down at the water like I had been. But he wasn’t staring at himself. He seemed to be just staring off into the water, his light grey eyes reflecting the purples that the water had picked up from the sky.  

“Hanschen, are you alright?”

He suddenly looked up from the water with smile, like he was trying to shake off something he had seen. “Yeah. I’m fine. Tell me, Ernst, did you happen to do those German notes?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on his smile, shining and wide. “Yeah… Hanschen, I’ve been wondering why you transferred-”

“I’ll race you back to Chancey!”

He stood, walking over to our bikes that had been laying lonely in the grass since we got here. “What?” I called to him.

He didn’t even look at me as he responded. “Race you to Chancey. Whoever wins needs to buy the other whatever they want from the lobby vending machine.”

“You’re gonna win, I’m not dumb!” He had already mounted his bike by the time I started pulling mine up from the ground, feverishly attempting to pick up my things as I went. 

“I’ll slow down for you,” He promised, his voice now eager and childish, echoing around the trees and hills. 

I had thought, maybe, that the Hanschen I was seeing was different. The Hanschen who helped me skip rocks wasn’t the same Hanschen who barely looked at me and disappeared as soon as class was over. But now, rock-skipping Hanschen was long gone. 

When we took off up the hill, we left Hanschen down at the pond. I was racing New-Kid up the hill instead. 


	10. Chapter 10

“Ernst, what rhymes with Wendla?” 

The second I walk into Melchior’s dorm, I am attacked by hormones and frustration. The small room was filled to capacity, with Melchior’s roommate Otto pacing around the room with his hands pressed to his temples. Even though it was still mid-afternoon, all the curtains were drawn and the only light came from the lamp on Melchior’s desk, which he and Georg were hunched over like mad scientists.

“What, are we coming up with a song?”

Georg waved me off over his shoulder and went back to the paper illuminated on Melchior’s desk. “So far we have ‘Dear Wendla, I will defend ya. If I could befriend ya, life would be fine’.”

“You’re not writing her a fucking poem, are you?” I crashed down on the only clear spot on Melchior’s bed. Most of his mattress was covered with overdue library books and half filled journals. 

With a wild sigh, Melchior leaned back in his chair. His normally well groomed waves had become a monster, a sea of brown sticking out in every direction after hands has been ran through it a thousand times. “I don’t know, Ernst. What else can I do?”

I couldn’t believe it. Melchior Gabor was confused. Not only confused, but frustrated. This was a rare thing. “Are you trying to tell me that you, of all people, are confused by women?”

“Not women. A woman. Singular. Just Wendla.”

He cast me a pitiful look over his shoulder and went back to work, scribbling down a furious stream of words in the futile hopes that something would come of it.

This wasn’t the first time I had been called up to Melchior’s room by someone who wasn’t Melchior. Most of the time, it was Melchior who would come by my room. And if he wasn’t letting himself in, he was just coming by to invite me to his room.

I knew things were serious when he sent a messenger down. That day, it was Otto, who insisted that I got upstairs as soon as possible. 

“Come on, it can’t be that hard,” Georg leaned up against the wall with defeat in his eyes. “I mean, you’ve gotten girls before. How different can Wendla be.”

“Very different, Georg,” Melchior insisted. 

Blindly, Otto suggested from across the room, “Well, what did you do to get those girls?”

“Nothing I want to do to Wendla.”

Melchior reached down and crumpled the poem in his fist, his face turning every shade of red and pink. When he made the mistake of getting a buzzcut our sophomore year, we bullied him relentlessly for his big ears. He had managed to hide them once his hair grew out, but now, the pink they had turned made them stick out like Dumbo’s.

“Well then what do you want to do to Wendla?” I said before I could think not to. 

Melchior nodded, tossing the dead-end poem at the overflowing trash can at my feet. “I don’t know. I just… I want to be with her. I want to be around her. I can’t explain why.”

For a moment or two, the room was silent. Just Otto’s footsteps and Georg ticking his tongue. 

This poor asshole was in too deep.

I had always known Melchior to be surrounded by girls. People who didn’t know him well thought he was lying about all the girls he had been with. But I knew from freshman year, when we were roommates and he would make me keep watch while he snuck out of our window to go down to St. Andrews on school nights.

It wasn’t like he bragged or anything. But when someone asked, he didn’t shy away from the facts. He just smiled whenever the subject was brought up, told his stories, and waited to be worshipped.

But now, he was sweating about how to tell a girl he liked her. Liked. Not that he wants to have sex with her or that he thinks she’s hot. No, he was losing sleep over admitting a crush.

Either he had changed or he had been abducted and this was his clone.

“What would you do, Ernst?”

I looked up from my hands, which had been aimlessly running over the front of my uniform pants over and over again. “What?”

“I know what these two buffoons would do,” He shot an accusatory finger at Georg and then over his shoulder at Otto. “But you seem a little better educated on the subject. What would you do?”

“If I liked a girl?”

“What? Haven’t you liked a girl before?”

I nodded immediately. I must’ve liked a girl at some point, I just couldn’t recall exactly who. “Yeah. Sure. I just… I’ve never acted on it.”

“Well what would you do if you did?”

I kept on rubbing the front of my khakis. For some reason, I couldn’t think of a single girl I had liked. At least, not recently. Not since I was in elementary school and I thought the girls on the playground were cool cause they could braid hair and play tetherball. 

I coughed once or twice and responded in a voice scratchier than I would like, “I dunno. I guess I would just try to spend time with her.” All eyes were on me and I could feel the sweat on my chest. “I don’t think I would tell her though. Not like… tell her right out, you know?”

“Then how would you tell her?”

Melchior was smiling now, his muddy hazel eyes followed my every word. “I guess I’d just show her and hope she catches on.”

“Well that explains why you’ve never had a girlfriend,” Georg’s voice burst through the conversation, indignant and grating. 

I can’t even rebuttal. I keep to myself, my tongue feels like it’s in my stomach. Because if I try to speak, I’m afraid I’ll think about it even more. 

But Melchior spoke for me, his voice now soft and gentle. “I think sometimes things just need to happen. You can’t force it with a dumbass poem.”

“What the hell did you do with Melchior?” Georg’s short legs carried him quickly across the room to Melchior’s desk. 

I didn’t look up from my hands, folding over and over in my lap, but I could tell Melchior had buried his head in his hands. “Nothing in this fucking universe confuses me like Wendla does.”

And in some sort of weird way, part of me agreed. 

That feeling stayed there, at the bottom of my stomach, in a little ball all day. And into the next day too, through my classes. It wasn’t until I spoke to Hanschen again that I felt like I had stopped holding my breath.

Hanschen approached me with a grin. I saw him from across the library, a practically unmistakeable figure. While everyone else in the room was crouched over their books, stress fanning off of them like steam, he stood tall and was still as put together as he was the first week of school.

“Midterms got you down, Ernst?”

I finished pretending like I was reading my environmental science textbook and looked at him. “Not entirely, why?”

“Skip dinner,” He said, less requesting and more insisting that I join him. “Skip dinner and come down to the cove.”

He sat down in the armchair across from my own, leather and worn with over a hundred years of use. Now that he was closer, leaning in to me, I noticed the strands of blond that were sticking up in the wrong direction and the hints of sweat that still decorated his hairline and nose. “How’s lacrosse practice?”

“Stressful. Skip dinner with me.”

“Why’s it stressful?” I smiled, taking my time to notice how his blazer seemed pressed, not a single wrinkle on it, when mine was probably at the bottom of my dresser in a ball that I hadn’t touched in a month. 

“Because your friend Melchior is a huge asshole,” He leaned back, stretching out his legs so that they were almost touching my scuffed up shoes. “I don’t know why you hang out with him. That’s why you should skip dinner with me.”

I tucked my own legs closer to my chair, but trying to make myself smaller was practically impossible when my legs were like pools noodles attached to my torso. “He’s better when you’re not trying to compete with him. He’s just a little too competitive for his own good.”

“Skip dinner with me.”

“I need to eat, Hanschen.”

“ Skip dinner. Come to the cove. It will be worth your time.”

His face was dead serious for a few moments, trying to stay stern when I cracked a smile. But he couldn’t keep up the stone-cold demeanor much longer after that, a signature Hanschen Rilow grin breaking through. “Fuck off, Ernst,” He said through the chuckles. “Just come on. Please?”

After a few moments, I shrugged him off with a nod. “Sure, sure. I’ll meet you there.”

“Bring your friend’s bike too. I want to race again.”

By the time we got down there, the sun was almost completely down. But thanks to the huge moon haunting the sky, our path was lit in icey blue hues. Hanschen still flew down the hill effortlessly, unphased by the darkness as I skidded nervously behind him. 

The close to freezing temperatures had made the grass stiff with frost. Be probably only had a few more days until the unrelenting snow would make our bikes obsolete and make us wish we could turn them in for skis. 

We sat on one of the few dry spots around the cove, a huge rock close to the water’s edge lined with years and years of moss. Hanschen was bundled in layers of fleece and a winter coat while I shivered beside him in a Faraday sweatshirt and a flimsy denim jacket I got my Freshman year and hadn’t washed since.

In between discussing how shitty the Lacrosse team was and the piles of homework assigned to us that we chose to ignore, I noticed Hanschen staring at me. Even in the darkness and under all of those layers, I could tell his eyes were locked on me and I droned on about the headache inducing amount of German homework. 

“Can I help you?” I interrupted myself, watching how the moonlight shone off of the lenses of his glasses so it looked like his eyes were made of moonshine. 

His voice muffled by the scarf wound around his neck, he responded immediately. “You’re cold, Ernst.”

“I noticed, Captain Obvious.”

  
Hanschen didn’t hesitate. Like he had been rehearsing it over and over, gloved hands went to work undoing his thick winter coat, handing it over to me in one fluid motion. “Here, asshole. Take this or freeze to death.”

“If I freeze to death, you’d have to pull me back up the hill,” I knew better than to refuse him. At this point I knew just to take the coat from him and pulled it tight around myself, almost immediately feeling warmer than I had been moments before. The sleeves were a bit too short and made me feel like I was wearing little kids clothes.

But I still couldn’t help but smile. I didn’t know why, but I just did. 

“No, I’d leave you for the dogs.”

“Ah, yes, all the wild Vermont dogs.”

Hanschen pulled down his scarf below his chin so his laugh came out in a puff of steam that I’m surprised didn’t immediately crystalize in the air. “Why are you such a smart ass, Ernst?”

“It pays.”

This time his laugh petered out, his head now turning to stare up at the sky. 

The full, bright moon couldn’t drown out the light of the stars, sparkling like gems stuck through the dark blanket of the sky. With his chin tilted up to stare at the stars, he looked even more like those statues, with their bodies contorted to throw a discus or heads thrown back in ecstasy.

“Do you know any of the constellations, Ernst?”

I was torn out of my night sky daydreams by Hanschen’s voice, “What?”

  
“I swear to God, that must be all you say,” Hanschen raised the hand closest to me, pointing to a cluster of stars. “That’s Cassiopeia, the queen of Ethiopia. She was so beautiful and so vain that she was banned at the sky. It’s just a wonky W.”

With his finger, he traced the zig-zag figure that was almost straight above it. Before I could say anything else, he pointed below the queen’s W. “There’s here daughter Andromeda. She looks like a big, messed up stick figure lying down.”

“Why do you know all of this?” I asked before he could go on. “To impress girls or…?”

“I learned it for myself,” He kept his eyes locked on the stars, which now seemed to be built into his lenses. “And that’s lyra. Apollo, the God of music, gave it to Orpheus and it made the most beautiful music. But after Orpheus’ wife died, he threw it into a river. Then our boy Zeus, the king of all the Gods, pulled it out and put it in the stars.”

“Why’d you learn it?”

For the first time in a while, Hanschen looked away from the night sky to shrug at me. “I’m trying to show you something beautiful and you’re worried about how I learned about it.”

So I go quiet, joining Hanschen in his captivation with the stars. Moments seemed to slow down to hours there, on the moss covered rock amidst frost and the puffs of steam coming from our lips. 

I didn’t feel the cold anymore. Now, all I felt was warm. The ball that had been in my stomach all day had melted like candle wax and my bones were wicks. 

Warmth radiated off of Hanschen, seeping into my rock and into my skin like a space heater. Even sitting there, no less than a foot apart, I could feel him through the winter coat. 

I didn’t even notice he was sifting through his backpack until he pulled out a long, bottle of clear liquid. 

“You drink, Ernst?”


	11. Chapter 11

The skin was so cold against my skin it felt hot, whipping across my face as we moved up the hill. All I can do is focus on the path ahead of me, watching pebbles meet my front wheel and then fling itself to the side.

“Ernst, wait up!” Hanschen’s voice called from behind me. I couldn’t help but smile, a few aimless giggles escaping as I turned back to look at him. 

A bit down the hill, Hanschen was still, staring up at the skill and breathing hard, his head tilted up to the sky. We had spent what must’ve been an hour admiring the stars, his stars. And as time slipped by and the liquor his brought disappeared, I focussed less and less on all the facts he knew. As he effortlessly told me the life story of every single star in the sky, all I could do was stare at him. Watch the steam come from his mouth with every word and his lips tilt into a haphazard smile. 

It was like he had fallen in love with the sky ten times over and was telling me the story of how they first met.

But none of the words hit me. They phased through me like I was made of water, rippling across my skin like skipped stones.

I’m not sure what I hit, but I felt the sudden jolt of my bike stopping and felt the sudden weightlessness of my body continuing. 

Up, over the handlebars, I was flung like a piece of crumpled up paper across a classroom. Like I weighed nothing at all.

I must’ve been in the air for no more than a second, maybe two. I wasn’t afraid though, and as the cold ground seemed to get closer and closer, I stayed in my state of star-wrapped bliss. I was untouchable for those few seconds.

When I actually did collide with the grass, time was back to normal. I tumbled a bit, my body already aching all over, before sliding to a stop on my back, the air vanishing from my lungs almost instantly. 

The pain was throbbing and constant, drumming up and down my spine and all along my legs. 

“Ernst!” Hanschen cried out above the ringing in my ears. Then the clatter of a bike being thrown to the ground and footsteps sprinting up the hill.

When I first got interested in art, Mom bought me a big print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. She said she saw it once on a trip to New York when she was in high school, back before I was born, when she used to spend all of her time travelling. 

I hung the print up next to my bed, against the peeling wallpaper. It would be the first thing I saw in the morning, brilliant blues and whites that made me think that maybe I was still in my dreams.

There, laying flat on the grass, I was beginning to think I was back in Van Gogh’s world. 

The sky above me was swirling, strips of dark blue paint interrupted by spots of white and green that weren’t there when I was sober or upright. It seemed to be moving, pulsating and whirling around me so slowly I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been laying there, my eyes wide.

If I was in Starry Night, Hanschen would be the moon. He came into my vision in swirls of yellows and orange, misplaced pieces of blond sticking out like paint strokes around his face. 

“Ernst? Holy fuck!” His voice was wavy, caught up in the swirls. “Are you okay?”

My neck ached, but I managed to nod. “Yeah… I think I’m fine.” 

Another blur of gold and Hanschen was holding his hand in front of me. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I’m fine, Hanschen,” I swung my hand wildly, managing to swat his hand away. Thankfully, he didn’t ask again. Because I wouldn’t have been able to answer. “Just...Just let me lay here for a second, alright?”

Finally, my breath returned. I took a few deep breaths, my lungs feeling brand new and shallow. Hanschen’s golden halo of swirls moved away, dipping to my left. Then, I felt his warmth, laying next to me as I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the pains all over my body subsiding. 

I could hear Hanschen beside me, breathing as deeply as I was. When the throbbing in my head went away and my vision began to return from the Van Gogh world, I turned my neck as far as I could to look at Hanschen before it felt like it would snap in two.

Hanschen was laying there, like I was. Flat on my back with his eyes closed tight. Like he was dreaming.

“How do you feel, Hanschen?”

“The most sober I’ve ever been,” He muttered before his eyes flicked open and he sat up again. “You scared the fuck out of me, Ernst. I thought you could have snapped your neck. Fuck, why aren’t we wearing helmets. If you hit your head on a rock we would have-”   
He was unravelling. Now I could see how flushed pink his face and and the fear in his eyes. “I’m fine, Hanschen. I promise. Don’t worry about me.”

He nodded a few times, now looking around us, up the hill where all the lights in the campus were off. He was more afraid than I was, like he was the one who had crashed. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said he was shaking. 

“Oh fuck, Ernst. You’re bleeding.”

His voice was even more worried now, like he was straining to speak. He reached down to touch my leg, which felt raw and sore like the rest of me. When I managed to push myself upright, I looked down to see my jeans had ripped open. One down my thigh and the other in small holes around my knee. Both bloody, with little bits of pebble and dirt stuck into my skin. 

“Huh. I don’t feel it.”

Hanschen shook his head over and over, nervously reaching out to touch the tears. “You must be invincible, Ernst.” He picked a pebble or two out of my wound. “Or very drunk.”

“Tipsy at most.”

He managed to chuckle through his stress. “Come on, don’t you want up? The grass is freezing.”

“I don’t mind. Can’t feel it.”

He reached out, touching my shoulder with a sad smile. “There’s a tear in my jacket, Ernst.”

I reached my hand around, ignoring the dull pain as I did, and felt my left shoulder. The slick, waterproof fabric had torn open where I had slid across the ground. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Hans-”   
“It’s fine. I’m glad it tore instead of you,” His voice was gentle now, soothing. Like he was trying to convince himself too that I was okay. “Are you feeling any better?”

“I was feeling better to begin with-”

“Don’t bullshit me, Ernst,” He smiled. “You don’t have to be all tough.”

I nodded a few more times, watching as Hanschen picked the dirt and rocks from my skin. His hands were still shaky, but they were warm and delicate. I thought that, maybe, once or twice, I could feel his quick heartbeat through his fingertips.

“Hanschen, relax. It’s fine.” 

Even if my depth perception was still shit, I managed to put my hand over his. He froze, his hand going almost rigid there on my knee. Without even thinking, I let my thumb run over his knuckles. His hands were so warm, like the icy cold weather didn’t even touch him. I had never seen Hanschen so worried. But as we sat there, my hand over his, the stress seemed to melt off of him.

I didn’t even notice that Hanschen was inching closer. I was just staring at our hands, harmless and warm. I only noticed how close Hanschen was getting to me when I felt the warmth of his breath against my cheek.

And then, Hanschen was there. Practically on top of me his face was so close to mine. His eyes had slipped closed, blissful and innocent. But all I could think to do was panic.

I pulled my hand away as fast as I could, feeling my heart pound in my chest like a drum set. 

Suddenly, Hanschen stopped. Freezing where he was beside me, his eyes opened and his face contorted into shock. “Oh, Ernst, I’m sorry I-”

“It’s fine!” My voice came out in a squeak as I pushed myself away from him and stood up. It didn’t matter how much pain I was in, my mind was screaming to get away as fast as possible. “I need to go.”

“Ernst, please, I didn’t mean to-” He scrambled to get to his feet, slipping and sliding in the grass. I was so used to seeing him move with thought and grace, seeing him uncomfortable looked unnatural. “I wasn’t...I wasn't trying to-”

“Sorry, I’m tired, I need to go to bed.”

I found Georg’s bike a few feet down the hill from us, twisted and broken looking on the ground like the fall had hurt it as much as it hurt me. With a pained grunt, I managed to pick it up and tug it up the hill with me. 

“I need to go, Hanschen.”

I could hear Hanschen trying to call after me, but I couldn’t hear the words. I just heard his voice, the nervous, panicked voice. Every few words I heard a ‘sorry’ or ‘I didn’t mean to’ or ‘it’s not like that’.

But I didn’t stop my fast escape up the hill. I walked as fast as my sore, bloodied legs could carry me. 

But Hanschen didn’t try to follow. 


	12. Chapter 12

WARNING: homophobia and slurs

 

My limbs ached and screamed as we made the death march down the hill to St. Andrews. Sore, hung over, and covered in bruises, Melchior had stormed into my room early that morning and peeled me from my bed.

He was full of questions. Where I was the night before, why my arms had bruises blooming like flowers, why I looked dead. I managed to shrug it off, trying my best to recall what had happened by the cove the night before.

All I had to link together what had happened was my battered body, Hanschen’s torn winter coat laying across the foot of my bed, and a trail of muddy footprints that I had brought in with me.

And the image of Hanschen’s face, getting closer to mine and his eyes fluttering closed behind a curtain of long lashes.

And I remembered running too. Running as fast as my bloodied legs could carry me until I collapsed into my bed, still sweaty and shaking like I had been through a war.

But Melchior wouldn’t dare leave me behind. And so he spent the morning throwing my clothes into my lap and demanding I get ready to go into town.

I dragged alongside him and Georg, my eyes threatening to slip closed. The dreary grey sky was like a nightlight, lulling me to sleep.

“Ernst,” Georg suddenly waved his hand in front of my face, snapping me back into reality. “Christ, man. What happened to you?”

“Didn’t sleep last night.”

Georg scoffed, stuffing his cold hand back into his jacket pocket. “Did you die too?”

All I could do was shrug. Then, a few loud footsteps came from behind our tight group. I attributed them to an underclassman running down to catch up with his friends and continued with my zombie walk.

“Oh, no…” Melchior hissed as the footsteps came closer, now slowing down to us. He then raised his voice, calling to the approaching runner. “What do you want?”

Before I could turn to see who it was, I heard his voice. “Hey, can I talk to Ernst?”

Hanschen didn’t look half as beat up as I did. It almost hurt to see him still put together when I felt like I was being turned inside out. But he was still frowning, working his pale bottom lip between his teeth.

Maybe even more worried than I remembered him looking the night before.

Melchior glared at Hanschen, looking him over like he was debating whether or not to fight him. “Fine.” He nodded to Georg, gesturing down towards town. “We’ll be down at the cafe. Come by when you’re all done, alright?”

“Alright. I’ll meet you there,” My voice came out thin, like paper. Melchior cast one last dirty look over his shoulder at Hanschen and continued past us down the hill. Georg followed quickly, leaving Hanschen and I behind.

Almost immediately, Hanschen began to speak, his mouth moving at a thousand miles an hour. “Listen, Ernst. I’m so sorry about last night. I was so drunk and-”

“It’s fine,” I cut through his panic with a smile. I watched for another moment or two, making sure Melchior and Georg were far enough not to hear. “Just drop it, alright.”

Hanschen, eyes wide with disbelief, shook his head. “I don’t even remember what happened, I swear to God. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and-”

“Hanschen, I promise. It’s fine.”

“Actually, I can’t even remember what happened!” He spoke in sudden, radical spirts. “I don’t even know what I was doing. I wasn’t thinking. At least, I don’t think I was thinking. Like I said, I can’t remember-”

“Hanschen, please!”

He went quiet again, his breath shallow like he had just ran a marathon. As I spoke, he hung onto every word I said like it was gospel. “It’s fine. I don’t know what happened. I just want to forget all about it. Let’s act like this didn’t happen.”

He let out a long, relieved sigh. I finally realized that I had been holding his breath the entire time we were talking. He ran his hand through his hair a few times, which fell back into place effortlessly. “Oh thank God,” He muttered between smiles. “I’m so glad you understand. I was so afraid you’d…”  
He shook his head again, like he was trying to shake something off of himself. A group of boys in shiny dress shoes and warm coats walked past us, so I lowered my voiced, bending down a bit to look Hanschen in the eye. “What? What were you afraid of?”  
“Afraid that you’d leave.”

He seemed so genuine. After we had just rattled off lies to one another about not knowing what had happened, he felt so real in that moment. Maybe it was the first time he had been really, truly honest with me.

“Leave?”

He nodded, a shy nod. Like he had become suddenly obsessed with the scuffs on his shoes. Only then did I notice the jeans and ratty sneakers. But I couldn’t question the lack of uniform now. Not as he cleared his throat and coughed out a slight. “I don’t really know anyone else. And I thought you might get freaked out and-”

“Why would I get freaked out? Nothing happened.”

Then he smiled again, dimples and everything. For a moment of so, you would have thought that the sun had came out, lighting up his face. “Yeah…” He muttered, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe his luck. “Nothing at all.”

Hanschen disappeared back up to the school, muttering out some flushed face excuse about doing homework as he left.

But I didn’t mind. Hands stuffed into my pockets, I gave myself the time I needed to collect the vague memories from last night and shove them into the corners and cracks of my brain. I was just glad I didn’t think about it. Because everytime I did, I felt the knots in my stomach. Like a thousand hands were squeezing my heart and kneading my guts.

But it was gone when I didn’t think about it. And maybe if I never thought about it again, I’d never feel it again.

“Ernst, where were you?” Melchior attacked me as soon as I walked through the door of the cafe. The room was mostly empty, a few Faraday boys in a corner table being the only others besides Melchior’s group.

I recognized Melchior and Georg, but those were the only two at the table who I knew. The three others were boys I assumed were from St. Andrews, all sitting across from Georg and Melchior in their dirty jeans and uncombed hair. It looked like the world’s worst blind date between an alt. rock band and bank regional managers.

“I was walking down…” When I didn’t approach their table, Georg waved me over, urging me to come sit next to him. Melchior and Georg had both bought their respective overpriced chai lattes while the three St. Andrews boys sat with their suspicious glares and crossed arms.

“Ernst,” Melchior cleared his throat a few times. “This is Rupert, Reinhold, and-”

“Bobby,” The boy in the middle stood, his hand shooting out to shake mine. This grip was strong and forced my knuckles to crack. “It’s nice to meet you, Ernst. I’ve heard a lot absolutely out you.”

When Bobby allowed it, I sat down at the last empty seat. All their gazes were awkward, the St. Andrews boys looking at anything besides Georg, Melchior, and I. Except Bobby. His eyes, big and brown, stared me down. Like if he looked away I would run. So he bit the inside of his cheek, his glance looking up and down my form.

“I hope you’ve only heard good things,” I tried to chuckle away the awkwardness. But there wasn’t even a crack on their icy glances. Even Melchior, who I was trying to mimic with a charming smile, looked at me like I was making a huge mistake for even opening my mouth.

“Sure,” Reinhold, a ginger kid with a tubby, round face, said in a scratchy voice. “A lot of good things. You want to tell him, Mel?”

Melchior cringed at the nickname, shooting a glare at him from under his waves. “It’s pronounced Melchior.” He looked at me with much more sympathetic eyes. “Ernst, we've been worrying about you. You’ve been hanging out a lot with Hanschen lately.”

“What’s wrong with Hanschen?”

“He’s a fag, Ernst,” Bobby spoke before Melchior could even try. He spoke with a sort of casualty that would be expected of someone discussing what they had for breakfast. I had never seen Melchior submit to anyone in all the years I knew him, not to older students or teachers or anyone. But now, he was bowing his head to Bobby and letting him speak. “Steer clear of him or he’ll try to suck your dick.”

I felt like I had crashed the bike, the air being knocked out of me once more. All I could do was stare in disbelief. The parts of my brain that held last night’s memories ached and groaned to be recalled. “I don’t know.” Was all I could say, staring at my hands.

But Bobby continued like a professor giving a lecture. “Why do you think he transferred to your school? He was trying to run away.”

He leaned back in his seat, rocking onto the back two legs. “He was pretty cool last year. A lot of people liked him. Real all American, you know? Varsity baseball, student government, top of the class, prom king, all of it.” He leaned in close, his eyebrows raised. Now, I could see all the flecks of gold in his eyes, lit up and shiny. “Then, a week before school was out,  Rupert and I found him underneath the bleachers after school with Adam Dieter. And we all knew Adam was a homo. Real quiet, real sad, painted nails type of guy. But Hanschen? We expected a lot more from Hanschen. You know he had just been elected student body president. And then all that went down the shitter. So he ran away. He didn’t even show up to graduation.”

“You told people?” My voice came out thin and sicky. All Bobby did was nod.

“I had to. What was I supposed to do? Let him just get away with it? Let him fool everyone for another year?” He shook his head, like he was trying to shake off a bad image. “He dated girls too! And they liked him too! The fucking sicko. I’m glad he’s gone now.”  
The others looked at me like they expected me to be outraged, or maybe just confused. But to be honest, I couldn’t feel a thing. I could just stare at my hands, wishing to be anywhere else and focussing on shoving those memories so far back my mind was filled with the thought of not thinking.

“We knew he transferred to Faraday but…” Bobby looked around at Georg and Melchior. “You’re lucky you know now. Before he tried some shit.”

I kept my eyes locked on my hands, smooth and long and beginning to look inhuman. “I don’t believe it.”

Melchior took his turn to speak again, looking over at Bobby as if he was ready to back down any moment. “Everyone in St. Andrews knows about him, Ernst.” He reached out, touching my shoulder more fearfully than he had before. “It’s good that you know now.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Get out.” Bobby’s voice was deep and demanding. It demanded that I looked up from my sweaty palms and back to him. In hindsight, he was one of the most attractive people I had ever met. Tall and muscular with features carved out of stone. But they weren’t smooth like Hanschen’s. His were rough and jagged. “He’s sick, Ernst. People will find out in no time. Then they’re all gonna assume you’re a fag too cause you hang around him. It doesn’t help that you already look like one.”

I wanted to slam my fists on the table and storm out. Put this cocky motherfucker in his place. Tell him that he’s wrong and he doesn’t know what he saw Hanschen do and he should watch his fucking mouth.

But I couldn’t. My chest was being crushed by a weight I couldn’t see and my tongue was too heavy to speak. Like hands were all over me, pushing on my spine and pressing my arteries closed.

I felt like I was falling apart there, with everyone watching me.

I collected my strength and nodded, “You’re right.”


	13. Chapter 13

My favorite thing about Faraday had always been breakfast. Most meals were bland, an entree and a side with little to no difference from day to day. But the mornings were like heaven. When I first arrived at Faraday, I was in awe at the full cafeteria of options every morning. But the plate stacked with warm belgian waffles in front of me had gone untouched. All I could do was stare at the little pools of melted butter, stats problems and literary analysis floating around my head. My bones were being held together by finals, my lungs reciting the carbon cycle and my fingertips expelling German word order. 

I was drifting between sleep and staring down at my index card with environmental science notes when a timid voice came from behind me. 

“Morning, Ernst.”

Hanschen looked small in such a huge room. I had never seen him around so many people. He usually disappeared in crowds, but there he was, standing out amongst the sleep deprived students shuffling around and stuffing their faces with eggs and bacon.

“Hey, Hanschen, I’m kinda busy,” I turned back to my waffles, taking a sudden interest in cutting it into squares and stabbing at it with my fork, dulled by the use of a thousand other mouths. I could tell he was still there though, his uniform shoes kicking at the tile. 

“I uh, was wondering why you haven’t been studying in the library lately?”

“I’ve been studying in my room.”

A few more shoe scuffs and I am still staring at my waffle. 

“I was wondering, if you’ve finished Paradise Lost-”

“I did. I’ll leave it at your dorm after class.”

“Did you like it?”

I coughed a few times, forcing all my energy into taking a sip of orange juice. I thought that if I kept my eyes locked on the plate in front of me, I could ignore the throbbing pain in my stomach every time I heard Hanschen sigh.

It was like the voice in my head was chanting ‘Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him’.  

“Well, I just got a copy of Emily Dickinson’s complete works. And I think you’d really like it. Maybe if you want to-”

“Leave me alone.”

Hanschen stopped suddenly, his voice suddenly cutting off like someone had grabbed him by the throat. And then, like magic, he was drowned out. All of the noise I had been focussing on- the squeaks of his shoes, the clearing of his throat, the rustling of his freshly pressed dress shirt against blazer- seemed to disappear. Instead all I could hear was the echo of the cafeteria chaos, meaningless conversation and clinking silverware. 

Maybe it’s better that way.

His Hanschen Confidence finally seemed to come back then. Even thrown into this unknown environment, he took the seat beside me, head bowed like a third grader whispering a secret. “Listen, Ernst. I don’t know what your problem is. But if it’s about what happened at the Cove, I thought I told you that I was drunk.”

“It’s not about that,” I turned to face away, choosing to study the cover of my German textbook instead of Hanschen’s face, only a few inches from mine. 

But when I remembered what Bobby had said, I had to stand. Had to get away. Had to make sure that no one saw us so close. Had to make sure no one saw me with Hanschen.

“Where are you going?” Hanschen attempted to raise his voice as I collected my books, leaving my untouched food where it lay. 

“Somewhere. Bye, Hanschen.”

But Hanschen Rilow was hard to avoid. Before I had met him, he was like a shadow. He used to move in and out of room like water, a blur of perfect hair and cuffed khakis. 

Now, he was a brick wall. Every corner I turned, every class I sat in, every hall I walked down, Hanschen seemed to appear. If I tried to get around him, he looked at me like I was crazy. Like I was confused. Like maybe I was just thinking of the wrong person. 

But he didn’t try to speak to me again. At least not until I felt something hit my shoulder in Knuppeldick’s class, as she droned on about the exam preparation.

While she stood, facing the blackboard and talking about essay questions, I looked over to see a ball of paper resting on the floor, resting against the leg of my desk chair like a fruit in a still life. 

For a moment or two, I was too scared to reach for it. Not afraid that Knuppeldick would notice, or that someone might think I’m weird for picking up what looked like trash.

But I was afraid of what it might have said. So I let it sit, a ticking bomb at my feet. Maybe I could ignore it long enough, forget about it, walk to lunch, let it get picked up and thrown into the trash can and be forgotten like it was meaningless.

But it wasn’t. I wish I didn’t know who threw it at me. I wish I didn’t know that there was scribbled print, short, squat, capitalized, written for my eyes to read. 

I really wished, in the moment, that I didn’t turn around for only a second of two, to see Hanschen staring at me like I held his life in his hands. His own hands were balled into fists on his desk, on edge. 

So I had to pick it up as quietly as I could, unfolding and unwrinkling. Maybe, that was all I needed to do. Unfold it and throw it away. But my eyes seemed to pull themselves out of my skull trying to read the crooked writing. 

‘DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG? ARE YOU OKAY?’

I felt the urge to pull the crumpled binder paper to my chest, holding it like the artifact after a war. His words feel like they are knocking on my brain and tearing at my temples. Begging that I read them, think of them, think of them. 

I shove the paper into the pocket of my khakis, forcing myself to stare ahead at the board and think of nothing but bar graphs and vocabulary.

My brain had already drowned the image of Hanschen behind me. Not daring to imagine how he looked now. 


	14. Chapter 14

“A note came for you,” Moritz said the moment I walked through the door, the earmuffs I was wearing muffling his speech. After I shelled off my coat and scarf, Moritz reached out to me, not looking up from the textbook he was bent over on his bed. In his hand, a little paper bird, finely creased and full of perfect angles. “Someone left it on the doorstep.”

But I didn’t unfold it. I kept it between my thumb and forefinger, studying it like it was a puzzle. “Hey, what are you up to?” I looked up to see Moritz still sitting there, his spine curved like a question mark. “It’s lunch time. You want to come down to the cafeteria and-”

“Can’t. I’m busy.”

I got closer, now standing next to his permanently unmade bed. “You want me to bring you something?”

“I’m good.”

“A granola bar?”

“I’m busy.” 

He didn’t look up at all, squinting at what appeared to be an English textbook that I had never seen. “What are you studying?”

“I have an English final tonight and I need to pass it,” he flipped the page. He seemed to be panicking over the book more than actually reading it.  

“Why? It’s Sunday?” 

Moritz nodded, finally looking up. Now I could see the dark under his eyes had gotten worse. Much worse. “It’s a make up exam. I failed the first one.”

I couldn’t quite remember the last time I actually saw Moritz. I saw him in class, sure, but we didn’t have much class overlap. Besides class, he was an enigma. When I got back to our room he was always awake, headphones on and bent over an enormous amount of homework.

And when I woke up, he was dead asleep. And he would stay asleep until after I had already left for my morning classes. 

There were a few times the routine was broken up by him waking me up after his studying lulled me to sleep. He didn’t mean to wake me up, sometimes with nervous muttering, sometimes with choked sobs.

I had learned not to ask about it. He wouldn’t answer anyway. 

The paper bird had writing beneath one of the folded wings, no signature to accompany it, but it didn’t need one. I would know the handwriting anywhere.

“ERNST,

PLEASE MEET ME BY THE COVE.

PS- BRING A COAT”

The coat I wore was one of Moritz’s. It smelled like coffee and the floor of our dorm room. But it was thick and protected me from the harsh weather.

When the snow had first fallen, all of Faraday was teeming with excitement. We had skipped breakfast, deciding instead to wake up with snowball fights. All day, walks around campus became a mad dash for your life, fearing that one of your classmates would ambush you with snow at any moment. The poor freshman didn’t even know it was coming when they became targets for snow warfare.

But now, weeks had passed. And almost every day brought snow with it. The blanket of white over Faraday that had been charming at first became frozen and harsh. Now, a walk to class was a hike over a snowy wasteland.

And the walk down to the cove was a treacherous journey. No bikes could make it through the solid six inches of snow, only a handful of footprints from the souls brave enough to venture down to the pond, now a covered in a thick sheet of ice. 

Hanschen stood on the icey shore, staring out at the edge of the campus beyond the trees weighed down by snow. His own coat, bright red and puffy, stuck out from the white landscape so much it was almost funny.

I made sure to follow the track he had made, my own feet landing in his footprints and making the holes bigger with every step. That is, until I arrived beside him. He didn’t look at me, I was almost sure that his eyes were actually closed. But he must’ve known it was me.

It seemed like a Hanschen thing to do. To sense it.

“What the fuck is your problem, Ernst?”

I hadn’t heard his voice in so long, it almost shocked me to hear. I kept my eyes locked on the tree line in front of us, breathing like I had just ran a mile. My breath came out of me like smoke from a burning building. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hanschen.”

Through gritted teeth, he continued. “I know you’re not stupid, Ernst. Stop acting like you are.”

“What if I am?”

“You’re not.”

This is what I had been dreading. Hanschen, in front of me, confronting me. I felt bad for him a little, but I felt even worse about the fact that I had missed him.

I missed talking to him, skipping meals or walks to class filled with conversation. And not like the conversation you normally get around Faraday. Real, good conversation. Meaningful conversation. 

I couldn’t explain why I missed him so much. It didn’t seem to fit. I didn’t miss Melchior like that, or Mom. It scared me, how much I missed him. 

“You know, don’t you?”

“Know what?”

Hanschen finally broke formation. He turned to me, I could see it from the corner of my eye and hear his feet fall in the snow. But I kept my eyes on the line between the ice and the snow, hoping the earth beneath us would crack like a sheet of ice and swallow us up. His voice was like a bell, tolling the end of the world in small, breathless words. “Melchior’s been acting weird towards me too. Glaring at me while we play. Refusing to change near me in the locker room. It’s like how all the people at Trinity acted.” He was still strong, each word solid as a rock. “Someone must have told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Why are you so confusing Ernst?” His voice suddenly cracked like a foot breaking through the ice, “You ignore me, but you still come down to meet me. Why? So you can ignore me to my face. You act like you don’t know but I know that you do.” He raised his voice, practically begging me. “Why are you so fucking confusing.”

But still, I didn’t turn to look at him. I kept my eyes on the trees as he took a few deep breaths, coming back from his episode of desperation and saying in a cold, clear voice. “You know.” 

I cleared my throat, it felt like there were a hundred spikes stuck to my lungs. “Well is it true?”

Now I looked at him, just turning my head enough to see his face, red and puffy. Only now did I notice the tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to fall.

I couldn’t imagine Hanschen crying. It felt like something that just shouldn’t happen. Like snow in the desert or two boys kissing. He seemed like one of those people who just didn’t cry. Maybe because it seemed like he was always right, always perfect, always happy. He had nothing to cry about.

“I hate a liar,” He sniffled a few times, the tears not daring to fall out of his eyes. He was pretty good at holding back, for now at least. “There’s nothing in this universe I hate then someone who lies.”

“Is that a yes?”

His silent wasn’t quiet. When Hanschen was silent, I could hear everything else like I was in the center of the earth’s orchestra pit. The crunch of snow beneath his shifting feet, the slight wind blowing through trees, the heavy sighs. All the sounds screamed at me, daring to shatter my eardrums. 

They all screamed ‘Yes, it is’.

“I think I need to go, Hanschen,” I broke the silence. “Have a good Christmas break, alright.”

I went to leave, looking back up the slick hill leading back to Iley. Back to warmth, to friends, to ignorance. But he spoke, stopping me dead. His voice was strong now, the tears replaced with some sort of anger. “I don’t get it, Ernst. Why does everyone else get their teenage years?” 

When I looked back at him, his chin was high, his eyes locked on the grey sky above us. Like he and the cloud hidden sun were playing hide and seek. With every word, another puff of steam from his mouth. “Why does everyone else get to break the rules? They’re have their grand romances and teenage rebellion and it’s expected, it’s encouraged. Everyone wants to fall in love.” A sigh and he tilted his head back, like he was feeling the non-existent rain on his face. “Why can’t I, Ernst? It’s not fair that they’re all allowed their teenage years and I’m allowed to wait. I’m allowed to keep secrets and run away when they’re found out. Why don’t I get what everyone else gets?”

I couldn't speak. If I tried to say anything, the hands I felt grabbing my vocal cords would have choked me. 

And even if they didn’t, what would I have said?

“I need to get back to my room.”

He turned to look at me, the tears were replaced by anger and his mouth was spitting venom. “Why? So we can keep on lying to ourselves? Ernst, we deserve-”

“We? This isn’t ‘we’, Hanschen,” The frustration in his eyes fell and he seemed startled as I continued on an adrenaline induced rant, my voice raised only so I didn’t have to hear my heart beating like it was going to kill me. “I’m not like you, okay? It’s not us against the world. Don’t drag me into this. I’m nothing like you and I don’t want to be!”

And then the silence returned, falling over us like a blanket made of steel. It trapped up like prison bars, leaving us both to stare at each other like we were strangers. 

Maybe we were. 

“Like I said, Hanschen. Have a good break.”

He nodded a few times, lips pressed together and eyes locked on his shoes. “Have a good one, Ernst.”

This time, he was the first to walk away, heavy footfalls in the snow getting quieter and quieter as I stared at the pond. I wondered what would have happened if I stayed there all day, watching the light fade and feeling the cold return to lay another inch or so of snow over Faraday. Or maybe I wondered how far I could run across the pond before I fell in. 

Or maybe I wondered how many more times Hanschen and I would run away from each other like frightened children. 


	15. Chapter 15

There weren’t many gifts under the tree, but those that were had been quickly unwrapped. A new easel, a watercolor set, socks, and an assortment of basic presents from various relatives who barely knew me. It had been exciting at first, waking up early and rushing down the creaky stairs without a care like I was five again. But by nine, the coffee had been poured and Mom was busy with her second try at french toast. During the first attempt she had to stop every few minutes, picking up the landline beside our ancient refrigerator that seemed like it hadn’t stopped ringing.

All the conversations felt the same. One of her six siblings calling to wish us a Merry Christmas, telling stories about the kids or asking about the weather.

In every call, I would hear her voice drop, hoping that I wouldn’t be able to hear from my spot on the couch. She would mutter into the receiver that no, we aren’t moving. Occasionally telling them that, actually, she was fixing up the house and it’s a lot nicer now. That she was probably going to get promoted, that her pay might raise, that she actually went on a date last week and it went really well.

They weren’t lies exactly. Just not full truths. I could tell as she ticked her tongue and hesitated to tell them exactly how much the house has fallen apart or how the promotion had already been given to someone else.

A few of them wanted to talk to me, urging her to wave at me wildly through the open door. They would ask the same questions once she handed me the phone. Yes, I have gotten taller. Yes, I’m almost done with school. I’ve only applied to couple schools, but I have high hopes. No, I haven’t gotten a girlfriend yet, it’s an all boys school.

And when Uncle Ed, who had gotten up and moved to New York the second he turned eighteen and never came back, asked if that meant I had gotten a boyfriend, I gave another bland no.

Even though it was Christmas, the morning news still went on. The blurry image came through over our ancient television, a huge box of static that probably should have gotten thrown away five years ago. The newscasters told the upbeat stories, wearing festive sweaters and big fake smiles.

I couldn’t help but notice the way that the weatherman’s hair fell into his face like Hanschen’s. Or how one of the reporters had dimples like Hanschen’s. Or how when one of the anchor’s laughed, he shook his head just like Hanschen did.

I had to turn it off before I went insane.

But the phone calls stopped ringing and second batch of French toast wasn’t entirely burnt, so we took a seat at our dining table, shoving aside the piles of bills, report cards, magazines, and christmas cards. The layer of papers had been there for so long that I almost forgot the actual color of our table.

“Did you see the nice clothes I laid out on your bed?” She asked between sips from a ‘World’s Best Mom’ mug that I decorated in kindergarten.

I nodded, struggling to speak through my mouthful. “Yeah. I don’t see why we have to go though,” She glared at me and I swallowed the food, “I mean, when else do we go to church?”

“You know, when I was your age, I went to church every single Sunday. Be grateful, Ernst.”

I nodded aggressively, searching for a napkin to to wipe the syrup from my chin with. “Yeah but all the people there know we don’t go every Sunday.”

“Those old ladies still think I’m in college. They can’t remember when we go or don’t go,” She shook her head and handed me one of the napkins tucked underneath a Cosmopolitan. “Plus, they like to see you. You’re a celebrity with elderly Episcopalians.”

A few more bites, dull talk about how aunt Lisa sent over a tie for me to wear and how she needed help shovelling snow when we got back and if I wanted to go catch a movie after dinner with the neighbors. It felt like I had been home all year, picking up where we left off when I left in September.

But I still felt like I had to be a bit nicer than if I actually lived with her year round.

“Want me to clean up?” I went to pick up her plate.

She nodded, dimples on full display. “Oh you don’t need to, Honeybee. You’re on vacation.”

“So are you, I got it,” She let me pick up her plate and take it to the already full sink. But I ignored all the plates and pans from last night’s dinner and went to work washing the power sugar off of plates that were probably being used in the 1950s.

“You are so much like your father, it’s ridiculous,” She muttered. When I turned she was standing behind me, leaning against the pantry with her arms wrapped around herself.

“How?”

She shrugged and ushered me to go back to my washing. “He always tried to kiss ass like you do.”

“I’m not kissing ass, I’m being nice.”

“He would say that too.”

I could hear that she was smiling, even if I was busy scrubbing over the chips and cracks in porcelain. Things had never been awkward between my mother and I when it came to the topic of my father. When I was younger, I had no clue that anything about our family was odd. I always assumed that we were completely normal. But when I entered elementary school and realized that other kids had two parents, she would ignore any questions I had about my father, feeding me euphemisms about how he “went away for a while”.

By middle school, she figured it was unavoidable. She told me simply that he left but she was never mad.

And now, we could talk about it casually. There was never any malice in her voice when she mentioned him in conversation, recalling a joke he used to tell or old habits that I mirrored without even realizing it.

But for some reason, I couldn’t bite my tongue now.

“Hey, do you know what ever happened to dad?”

A long sigh and a few steps towards me. “No. Why do you want to know?”

I shrug , setting the plates down to dry. “I’m just curious.”

“You’re not gonna go looking for him, are you?”

When I looked at her, fear had lit up her eyes. Nervously, I continued, “What, is a serial killer or something?”

She cracked a smile after what felt like an eternity, “No, he’s not,” She reached out, a small hand pulling some threads from my brand new sweater. “He’s just not the type you should go looking for.”

“Sounds like a serial killer, Mom.”

Her kind hand balled into a fist, punching my shoulder. “No. He’s just a smart ass. Like you.”

“Fine, act like that,” I set to work cleaning up the wreckage from last nights disaster stir-fry. But Mom couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut, it seemed to run in the family.

“But I did love him. Don’t think that I ever didn’t love your father.”

My busy hands paused and I spoke over the rush of water. “Then what happened?”

She took a few moments to respond. Like she was looking for the words that she had lost. But after a heavy sigh, she responded. “I think things were all too much for him. He couldn’t handle everything coming at once.”

“So he ran?”

“He didn’t run, Ernst,” Her voice was stern, like she had been telling herself that for years. Suddenly, she softened again. “But look at us. I think we’re fine without him. Besides, he didn’t like Christmas.”

I bit my tongue and smiled at her, wishing that I could tell her that it seemed like he ran.

It must run in the family.


	16. Chapter 16

The pack of girls around me had been there all night. Sometimes, a few boys would fade in, listening for a few moments before walking away. But from the moment I arrived, they had been on me like vultures. I hadn’t even gotten off of my bike before the first one descended, I think her name was Rachel. And she insisted that I tell her all about Faraday.

Then the others joined, creating a stationary blob on the couch in the living room with me at their center. No one else dared stay in the room with us there, annoyed by their constant talking and giggling.

Some of the guys would glare at me as I answered questions, angry that I had gotten the undivided attention of every single girl in the house.

I wasn’t entirely sure of who’s house it was. I had been invited by a couple guys I went to middle school with who had seen me at the market in town running errands for Mom. And of course, because I was Ernst Robel the Private School Kid, they asked me to come by for New Years.

They probably regretted it though, as a girl I think was named Brittany who was in my seventh grade P.E. class was asking me about what the dorms were like.

“They’re fine. Some of the guys are kinda loud,” I saw their faces, a bit disappointed that I didn’t have any crazy answers. But that had been the case all night. So I often found myself diverting to the crazier stories, even if I hadn’t been the one to actually see it, I told them like I had.

I was just glad I hadn’t been here with Melchior. Because if he were here, I’d be sipping shitty booze in the corner with all of the other guys.

Thankfully, they weren’t asking if all the guys at Faraday were scrawny dorks like me. If they even saw the Faraday Lacrosse team, they’d throat punch me and leave me in the dust.

They were just horny enough for the words ‘Private School’ to be dangled in front of them and they would blindly think that I was the hottest thing in the world.

All the stories I told had been told a thousand times, to anyone who asked what a private school was like. The time that Melchior snuck girls into our shared dorm freshman year and thought I was asleep. Or when some boys in the grade above me got into the science room after curfew, threw pure sodium in the pool and the school went into lockdown after the explosion woke everyone up. My favorite was when some guys broke into the on-campus chapel at the beginning of the year, stole the statue of Jesus on the cross, and after graduation, put it up on the roof of the Iley dorms.

I was in the middle of my story about Melchior breaking his arm sledding down the hill to Clear Cove and broke through the ice when I was interrupted by someone coming up from the basement and approaching the couch.

The boy standing in front of me blocked the light with his sliver of a body. He was small, but not ‘can wrap one hand around his waist’ small like me. Small like so short I would have thought he was thirteen if he didn’t open his mouth.

“I’m gonna go to Seven-Eleven and grab some stuff. You wanna come, Ernst?”

  
His voice was scratchy and raw, like when a rock singer did and interview over the radio. When I stood, I could better see his face. He looked almost like a doll, big heavily-lidded blue eyes accompanied by thick dark circles underneath. If the lights weren’t so dim, I would have noticed the thin layer of eyeliner as well.

“Holy shit, Max?” I coughed out. I remembered his eyes from my eighth grade art class. He sat in front of me, bent over his desk like he couldn’t see unless the paper was only inches away from his face.

Good to know he hadn’t grown an inch since then. But still no glasses, which he probably needed.

I used to think he was a weird kid. Or rather, everyone else thought he was a weird kid and I mindlessly agreed. I think it started in third grade, when he would spend recess sitting at the corner of the basketball court, knees tucked to his chest and his big eyes watching everyone else like he was waiting for something.

But the final blow came when we were in sixth grade and he tackled a kid in the cafeteria, biting into his neck after the kid called Max a freak.

“Yeah. Long time no see. Wanna come?”

I looked back to the group of girls frowning up at me. But I think by then they had realized that I wasn’t as scandalous as they were hoping and didn’t argue when I followed Max out of the house.

“What have you been up to, Ma-” I closed the door after us, but when I turned around Max was already halfway across the front lawn on his way to the beat up red pick up truck parked on the curb. So I jogged after him, almost tripping a few times on my way down the porch and into the darkness. The only light was the faint, barely there, crescent moon in the sky.

Max’s pick up smelled like weed and the passenger seat was taken up by stacks of textbooks and binders. He was quick to shove all the books to the floor and clear the seat for me, “I swear to god I’m not drunk or anything. I wouldn’t be driving if I were. And I definitely wouldn’t invite you to come along.”

“I believe you,” I assured him and noticed the duct tape in the corner of the passenger window. It wasn’t entirely falling apart, but it was close to it.

Randolph wasn’t like most towns I had ever seen. Most of Randolph was just space, a highway cutting through rolling hills, passing by narrow roads leading off to the middle of nowhere. That’s where the host of the party lived. Down a long road shared with maybe two or three more houses that people driving through Randolph to get somewhere else probably didn’t even notice.

You couldn’t go too fast on these side roads, the pavement was too uneven and the curves were to tight. But once you got on the highway, it was a free for all.

And Max took advantage of that, going almost seventy where it obviously said fifty-five.

Everything looked the same until you got to main street. Just green trees and hills broken up by the occasional house. I was always happy to see that the sign advertising ‘FRESH FRUIT’ that had been up as long as I could remember was still up, no matter what time of year it was.

The ride might have been awkward if Max allowed silence. But with all the windows down and the music playing as loud as possible, I had no chance to speak. Which also meant I was given no chance to fuck it up and create awkward silence.

Max had burnt a CD full of Depeche Mode and The Cure and and a bunch of other bands that the guys at Faraday called gay. The guitars blared through the speakers and the bass shook the truck until Max reached over to turn it down. We were approaching ‘Main Street’, which wasn’t really a main street, just the only part of town with people in it. Old buildings lined the highway, a bakery, a butcher, a few restaurants, and tons and tons of antique stores. The only modern buildings were on either end of the “Main Street”, bookending the gold rush architecture with the elementary and strip mall on one side and the gas station and high school on the other.

Max didn’t actually speak until we arrived and the only stoplight in town. Of course, we were stopped for no one, as the town was empty. Everything in Randolph closed at nine, even on New Year’s Eve.

“So, Ernie, hows private school life treating you?” He asked, eyes locked on the red light.

I gave my generic response, “Pretty good, finals are hard and all the guys there are assholes.”

“Not too different from around here then,” He chuckled. When I looked over at him, his face was lit only by dim red light. It cast shadows all over his face, the bags under his eyes like valleys and his red hair looked like a forest of trees set on fire.

I started until the light turned green and he slammed his foot against the gas, jolting us towards the promised land that was the Seven-Eleven.

“I get why you ran away though,” He turned off the engine, “Anything is probably better than around here.”

“Well what are you gonna do after you graduate?”

“Leave.”

He was quick, jumping out of the truck and charging into the front doors before I could even unbuckle my seat belt. It took me a minute to find him once I actually got in there. His head barely popped up above the shelves, so I had to follow a puff of ginger hair around as he weaved in and out of the aisles.

The only other person in there was the cashier, a tired guy in his twenties cursed to spend his New Year’s in a gas station mini-mart. He probably graduated from high school in Randolph, judging by how he looked at Max like he recognized him and didn’t like it. Or maybe he was just staring at Max because it’s not often a boy can wear eyeliner and girl’s jeans in rural California without being lynched.

The stuff he got was fairly normal, bags of chips, sodas, a bag of Skittles. It wasn’t until we got to the cashier that he pointed at the wall of cigarette cartons and razors before us. “And can I get a pack of Newport Lights too?”

I expected the cashier to say no immediately, or maybe just laugh. But instead he turned around and pulled one of the baby blue packages from their spot behind glass. He didn’t even ask for an I.D. from a kid that looked fifteen at most.

“Anything else, Max?” He asked, ringing up the armful of junk food. When Max shook his head, the cashier looked at me, giving a little chuckle at my open mouthed shock, “Who’s this?”

Max looked me over with a little smirk, like another story was being told behind his eyes. “This is Ernie. He’s a childhood friend,” he paid the guy and gestured for me to carry his purchases. “Goes to a private school up in Vermont.”

“Then welcome home, Ernie. And I’ll see you around Max.”

As he walked out of the automatic doors, Max called over his shoulder, “See you, dude! Call me if you need me!”

I tripped over my long legs, stumbling towards the truck in a wide eyed shock. Max seemed to really get a kick out of my dumbfounded look, the smirk on his face practically begging me to ask him what had happened. But before I could, he kicked open the driver's door and let out a sly, “I’m his dealer. He’s one of my best customers.”

When I didn’t respond, Max continued, willing his sputtering engine to come back to life. “Weed, Ernie. I sell him weed. Do they not have that at Faraday?”

“Not that I know of,” My body was tossed around the cab as he pulled out of the parking lot and back in the direction of party.

Max chuckled, “It’s the only way I can get away with looking like this around here.” He gestured to himself with a sort of carelessness, like it was just a fact of life. “People don’t care what you look like, what you dress like, how you act or who you fuck as long as you sell them weed.”

Max didn’t look bad. But he didn’t look like most of the kids I knew. The pierced ears, the painted nails, the makeup, the thrift store sweater that made his tiny body look shapeless underneath the thick wool. I don’t think anyone else I knew would have dared to try even one of the aspects that made up Max’s appearance. But there he was, alive and tempting everyone he walked by with to try to question it.

And it worked for him.

“The thing is, people here are so fucking sad,” The only light on his face being the reflection of his headlights as we left the dim streetlights of Main Street. “Every person who lives here is so sad, they need me. They can’t hate me because if they did, their life would be a hundred times more miserable.”

He continued, his voice scratchy and raw. It was like it was clawing itself from his chest, trying to escape his throat. “You’re lucky you got out, Ernst. You’re lucky that you’re so smart.”

“I’m not that smart,” I attempted to contribute. But Max shook his head, doubtfully running his thin bottom lip over his teeth.

“Then you were lucky enough to fake being smart enough to get out,” The road ahead of us seemed to stretch on for thousands on miles, just trees and green and shadows that played pretend with my eyes in the form of bears and serial killers. So instead I look at Max, his hands gripping the steering wheel like it was life or death. “I think you’re gonna be the only good thing to come out of Randolph, Ernie.”

“You came out of Randolph,  right?” I tried to get a good look at him, but all the light was gone. And the reflection of the headlights made him look like he was made of shadows. I couldn’t see his eyes at all now, they just looked like black holes in his skull.

“Ernie, I wouldn’t be surprised if you came back from being an astronaut or stock broker or president and I’m still stuck here, selling the same weed to the same cashier and driving the same beat up car down the same streets.” He sped up, pushing eighty down the empty highway. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I get stuck here. This place is a fucking trap.”

I couldn’t speak for a few moments, just stared at the trees and fields flying by us like blurs. “I don’t want to be a stock broker or anything,” I managed to whisper. The breaking of the truck and the sound of the tires were the only other sounds beside our breathing.

“Then what do you wanna be?”

“An artist.”

He looked over at me, disregarding the road for a moment or two. And for the first time, he really looked at me. He took me in, even in my shadows and angles. “That’s good. We need more artists.” He looked back to the road. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear the little smile in his voice.

He turned suddenly, not bothering to turn on his blinker or even slow down that much. Just a sharp turn right down a road that definitely wasn’t back to the party.

“Where are we go-“

“It’s not midnight yet. We’ve got time to kill beforewe have to go back,” He took another turn down a dirt road, past a field full of cows unaware of the holidays. “They’re all so wasted they won’t notice how long we’ve been gone.”

I nodded and watched the shadows pass. Max had to go slower, the road beneath us was uneven, covered in bumps and potholes. He finally slowed to a stop, steering his truck into the little patch of grass on the side of the road, A few more jolts and bumps and he shut off the engine.

For a moment, I thought he was going to kill me. I had heard the stories. Dumb kid gets driven to the middle of nowhere and is killed in cold blood, his body being left in a ditch for weeks before someone noticed.

As I was wrapped up in my fear and the mental image of being stabbed to death among cows, Max reached into the center console, pulling out a pack of CDs that he had burned. In The dum light, I could see labels written on them in Sharpie.

“Do you like The Smiths, Ernie?” He asked, probably sensing my fear and trying to ease my nerves.

“I’ve heard the name before but-”

He pulled a CD from the pack, “What the hell do you guys listen to in that prep school?”

“I’m a big Bowie fan. And Liz Phair.” I tried to save myself. But Max just chuckled and ejected the previous CD.

  
“Really? Bowie? You’re such a stereotype.”

“Stereotype of what?”

He didn’t answer my question, just put in the new CD. The only light in the cab of the car was the dim reds and blues on the dashboard, the white numbers blinking and reminding us that it was eleven-fifteen.

A low bass riff thrummed out of his speakers, tinny and muffled. But at least Max had turned the volume down from deafening to just plain loud. But I could still hear him when he spoke up, the music transforming into airy acoustic guitars.

“What’s your new year resolution, Ernie?” He almost shouted.

A man’s gloomy voice came through the speakers, singing in the strongest British accent I’d ever heard. “ _Take me out tonight, where there's music and there's people, and they're young and alive...”_

 _“_ I dunno,” I looked over to see that he was staring straight ahead, like he was looking for something in the trees. “What’s yours, Max?”

_“Driving in your car, I never, never want to go home, because I haven't got one anymore…”_

“I want to be honest with myself,” He finally looked over at me. His big eyes looked close to white, just reflecting the shine of the dash lights. They traced over my form, starting at my face, like I was a book he was trying to read, but I was in a language he couldn’t understand.

But I didn’t feel nervous. Normally when people looked at me for too long, or just looked at me at all, I would feel like bugs were crawling all over my skin. Like everything about me was too big, too wrong, too crooked.

For some reason, here, in the dark, I didn’t mind that Max was staring at me. A part of me maybe even liked it.

“ _Take me out tonight, because I want to see people, and I want to see life…_ ”

“You’re one of the most honest people I’ve ever met,” I squeaked out beneath the music. Part of me hoped that Max didn’t hear me. But I could tell, by the way his eyes snapped back up to my face, that he heard me.

“ _Driving in your car, oh, please don't drop me home, because it's not my home, it's their home and I'm welcome no more…_ ”

Now he was looking at my face, the messy hair and the acne on my forehead and the freckles that had faded after the lack of contact with the sun.   “What makes you say that?”

“You don’t sugar coat or keep secrets,” I nodded, choosing instead to look at my hands in my lap and not the boy who seemed to be staring straight into my brain. Maybe he could read my thoughts and he saw that my brain was flashing back and forth between wanting to reach out to him and wanting to run away. Between bone shattering fear and mind-bending joy.

I was content there, but somehow I was still anxious.

“ _And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die…_ ”

“What’s your resolution?”

“I think I want to be honest too,” I replied, noticing how my nail beds were raw and red from all the biting I had done since I had come back home.

_“And if a ten ton truck kills the both of us, to die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine..”_

That’s when he reached out, his hand finding a place on my knee so casually, like the light touch was nothing at all. My body tensed suddenly, my breath stopping dead before it got out of my lungs. His casual hand became tense as well, his grip tightening over my jeans. “Sorry,” His voice was frail. “Do you want me to sto-”

“No…” I could barely even whisper. My mouth spoke before I could think. Like my body had been the one ordering it around. His grip loosened, his thumb tracing little circles on the side of my knee. He nodded, and I felt the warmth of his hand soothe me like a lullaby. It was almost comforting, like I had spent my entire life waiting for Max to reach out and touch me.  
_“Take me out tonight, take me anywhere, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care…”_

“There’s no one like you here, Ernie,” Max sounded even smaller than he was, his voice floating around me, ghostly. “Everyone’s got their guards up here. Everyone is trying to be something they’re not.”

_“And in the darkened underpass, I thought oh God, my chance has come at last, but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn't ask…”_

Out of instinct, I put my hand over his. It felt right there, my thumb tracing over his knuckles, which stuck out of his skin like boulders. “So is everyone at Faraday. They all think that they have to be the best at everything. Like they have to be this perfect person.”

_“Take me out tonight, oh take me anywhere, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care…”_

“It’s a good thing we’re real then,” He muttered, his hand gripping my knee again like he was making a promise. “The world needs more real people.”

_“Driving in your car, I never never want to go home, because I haven't got one, oh, I haven't got one…”_

I chuckled a bit, finally looking up to see Max, staring me down with eyes so wide I would have thought he was trying to remember every dot and pore in my face. “More artists, more real people. You’ve got a shopping list for everything the world needs.”

_“And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die…”_

“Cause our world is fucked. And good people need to fix it.” I didn’t move my hand as he spoke. He looked between me and my hand with those intense eyes, a little smile playing at his lips.

_“And if a ten ton truck kills the both of us, to die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine…”_

“Now who’s the stereotype?” I caught his eye, the large pupils growing even larger in the dim light. “Grimy punk kid who hates the world?”

He finally laughed, leaning over the center console. His voice was rough, like it had gone unused too long, and sent little shocks down my spine with each chuckle.

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

“You’ve got me pegged, Ernie.”

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

He leaned even closer, his large eyes closing and his hand squeezing my leg. Like he was signalling me to go ahead. In that instant, he looked like Hanschen.

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

I hadn’t thought of Hanschen much. I tried to shove the image of him away, into the corners of my brain where one day, he would disappear.

But there he was, in front of me. For a moment or two, his face was pasted over Max's. Leaning in like Hanschen had, holding his breath like Hanschen had.

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

But this time, I closed the gap between Max and I, letting Hanschen fall to the wayside.

His lips are cold, but they’re alive. There’s a spark behind them that kept the little sparks alive on my lips, in my chest, in my fingertips. Only then did I realize that I was actually kissing him.

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

His hand moved out from under mine, inching up my thigh. I found my own hands grabbing onto the front of his sweater, rubbing my fingertips over the thick wool. Beneath, I could feel his shallow chest, radiating heat.

Beneath chapped and cold lips, he tastes like honey. One of his hands makes its way to my hair, running fingers through misplaced strands, messing it up even more than it already was.

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

His hands are now desperate, holding onto me like this was a dream come true and he was afraid of waking up. Part of me must have known this was going to happen. But another part of my had been praying it wouldn’t.

Because I was worried I would like it.

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

And I did. I pulled Max closer. Max from elementary school, Max who we used to whisper about in the hallways. Max who had been rumored to be gay since we first learned what that word meant.

He never fought against those rumors. Maybe he knew all that time.

Maybe he was just being honest.

_“There is a light and it never goes out…”_

“We should get back to the party,” He was breathless when we finally broke apart, the song switching to mopey acoustic guitar. I feel my face flush pink as his hands leave my body and return to the steering wheel.

“Yeah… We probably should,” I notice how fast his chest is moving up and down, his heart must have been pounding just like mine.

He started the truck again, the headlights sparking back to life. It was like we were in another universe, the real one. Like we had been gone on a vacation to a world where it was just us, in the cab of the only car that existed on the only road listening to the only song in our private little universe.

But now we were back in Randolph on a random dirt road in his dad’s truck. Everything was put back into context.

The ride back was silent, his hand laying on top of my knee just like before. But that was all we did. That was all we could do in the real universe. And when we got back to the house, no one suspected a thing. They just thanked Max for the food, looking at me with their big, ignorant smiles.

In the real universe, we were two old friends who took the long way home.

Max didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night, disappearing back down to the basement where joints and cigarettes were being passed out like candy and smoke flooded through the bottom of the door like they had set up a fog machine.

But I knew he was there, below me, hearing the same pounding music that I was hearing. I wondered if he also wished that they would put on The Smiths and let the two of us lock ourselves away for the night.

It wasn’t until the countdown that he came up from the basement, eyes bloodshot and staying as far from me as possible.

From across the room, I counted with the others. But I kept my eyes on him and prayed that maybe, as the clock struck midnight, the world would freeze around us again.

But it didn’t. Midnight came, so did nineteen-ninety-five. So did the liquor. So did that Brittany girl, who planted a drunk kiss on my lips as the others cheered and rang in the new year.

I did what every other guy would have, laughed it off and kept drinking until I forgot what year it was. Until I forgot who I was. It was better like that. 


	17. Chapter 17

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!” Melchior’s voice shouted  as soon as I picked up the phone. He wasn’t singing as much as he was just yelling. “Happy birthday, dear Ernst! Happy birthday to you!”

His screams definitely didn’t help the pounding headache that had been haunting me since I woke up. But I laugh it off, hissing through my teeth. “Good morning, Melchi…”

“The big eighteen!” His voice echoed through the receiver. “How’s your break, birthday boy? How was your new years?”

“Pretty good, I think. I don’t really remember-”

Melchior cut me off with a shriek. “Ernst Robel, you madman! A party? What are Californian parties like?”

“They’re fine I think. We-”

“Hawaii is crazy, Ernst,” He laughed over me. With a dreamy sigh, he continued, “I literally just walked down the beach and every ten feet there were more drinks. No one cared about my age or any of that shit. It was like the whole island was a fucking party!”

“And how do your parents-”

Another chuckle. “Oh, they think I’m off studying or taking long philosophical walks or reading poetry on the beach or having long, intellectual conversations with locals. Why would they suspect that their perfect little boy would be doing anything but that?”

“You’re so full of shit, Melchior.”

“But you!” Melchior gasped, his voice pitching up with delight. “Sinless Ernst Robel. Little angel rule follower Ernst! What did you get up to last night?”

I coughed a few times, looking around to make sure that Mom was nowhere to be seen. From where I was at the top of the stairs, I could barely hear her downstairs, humming so faintly that if I wasn’t holding my breath I wouldn’t have heard her. After she picked up the phone and called for me to answer it on the upstairs line, she went back to baking what she called ‘Birthday Bread’ and singing along to the radio.

I whispered into the phone. “Not much.I just… Melchior I think I figured something out.”

“What is it?” He asked, lowering his tone as well. “What are you being so cryptic about, Ernst?”

“Last night, during the party, I met this old friend and we were talking and-”

Melchior let out a great sigh. “Ernst, you didn’t like, do LSD and discover the secrets of the universe, did you? Cause that’s always bullshit.”

“No I didn’t, we just went for a drive and I realized that-”

“What? You’re not gonna tell me that you’re gay, are you?”

No, that wasn’t it. It couldn’t be that. It was something like that, but not that exactly.  
That word felt dirty, like if I said it, the curse it carried would be put upon me.

I’d be one of those stereotypes that Max laughed about. Or even worse, I’d be like Hanschen and no one would look at me the same.

Even if it all made sense. Even if everything about my life made sense when I looked back and noticed that I had never really had crushes on girls, and that all my daydreams about being friends with other boys were more than that. Even if it things felt so much clearer when I looked at it with that word attached.

I couldn’t be. I refused. I wasn’t gay. Every guy who was gay was just that. That’s all they were. No one ever talked about a guy who happened to be gay. It was always the first thing out of someone’s mouth when they talked about them.

Like Luke. Luke was a Faraday guy who graduated the year before me, a bit too feminine for all the other guys to understand. If anyone talked about Luke, the first thing they would say is, the gay guy. That’s all he was, Luke the Gay Guy.

I wanted people to know me as Ernst, the smartass guy. The caring guy. The funny guy. The tall guy.

I couldn’t just erase myself and replace it with the title: Gay.

“No, I’m not.”

Melchior laughed a bit too loud. “Oh, thank God! You had me worried for a second.” I wanted to say something else, I’m not sure what, but before I could even think of what to say, he continued in a happy tone. “I sent you a birthday present, did you get it?”

Under the loud, nervous pounding of my heart, the conversation continued. Not for too long, as Melchior got called away for his parents for breakfast, even though it was nearing lunch time back on my side of the country. And after a few more birthday wishes and cheery goodbyes, he was gone. Leaving me standing alone in the hallway, the phone in my hands and ringing in my ears.

I had to get out of the house. No matter how big and grand, it felt more like a Victorian birdcage than my childhood home.

I waved to Mom as I put on my jacket, slipping out the back door with a murmur of “I’ll be right back”. She gave me an odd look, but let me go, probably noticing how exhausted I looked.

Eighteen years old and I felt like my head was about to pop off my shoulders.

Mom’s back garden was covered in a thin sheet of frost and snow. The ancient wood planter boxes that she had spent hours slaving over were white and cold, lifeless.

As was the rest of the property. The grass, which Mom went to insane extents to keep green and lush, had no choice but to die under the frost. Rose Bushes were barren sticks, forget-me-nots forgotten until spring returned.

And spring felt so far away. The sky seemed to be grey forever.

There was no path to lead me to the pond. I had to try to remember how I walked there as a child, let my muscle memory carry me beyond the little back garden, past the green house and tire swing that hadn’t been used in years.

When my grandfather was around, there was a path that lead right from the back door to the pond, only a ten or so yards away from the house. The grass used to be worn down, a thin trail of dirt where he had walked. And he had made the walk every day, sometimes twice a day, but always after dinner. He’d shuffle along, no matter how badly his back was hurting, to the pond for sit for a while, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes an hour, on the old wooden bench that had been on the shore since he was a little kid.

The same bench that I sat on after brushing off a layer of snow.

The bench used to be red, I thought, when it was first painted. But now all the paint had worn away by weather and neglect, leaving just damp, rotting wood tinted red.

It was in better use when my grandfather used it. Back when I was still going to elementary school and my grandfather asked me to accompany him on his evening walk, the bench didn’t creak and groan when we sat on it.

Mom would chuckle, looking out the living room window to see her ‘Two Ernsts’ sitting side my side, musing over the little pond.

It wasn’t like the cove back at Faraday. It was much smaller, barely ten feet across. But in the summertime, it was absolutely alive. All day and all night, you could hear the concert of frogs from the house, harmonizing in notes only they found beautiful. With families of fish beneath them and a sky full of lightning bugs above them, our backyard became a scene from a fairytale every May.

Now, I was cold, lifeless. It wasn’t frozen, but there wasn’t the spark of life that came with warmer weather.

But underneath the frost and snow, I was still able to find a good rock. Flat and thin, a little brown disk between my bright red fingers. Just like the one Hanschen had pushed into my hand.

And I threw it just like Hanschen had taught me, letting it skim across the top of the water.

The first few flew gracefully like Hanschen’s had, like my grandfather’s had. But the more I threw, the sloppier they got, the fewer skips, the less flat rocks.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been out there, skipping rocks, but it was enough time for my skipping to devolve into throwing, tossing rock after rock into the water and watching the ripples break through the calm water in tiny tsunamis.

I only knew I had been out there for too long when I heard Mom call for me, screaming my name from the back door. She had been calling for a while, only catching my attention after the fifth of sixth scream. “Ernst! What are you doing?”

I wiped my wet hands on my jeans, nearly falling over myself to turn around and see Mom, looking tiny against our hulking house. Large, looming, and peeling lemon yellow, when I was younger I used to look at it like it was a castle.

Then it began to rot, more than it had already. And I noticed the warped wood beneath my feet and crumpling walls. A hundred years were not kind to the Robel house.

“N-Nothing!” I slipped on the snow on my attempt to get to back up the path I made, barely catching myself and managing to look like a newborn dear in the process.

“You’ve got a phone call,” She watched me scramble up the to the back garden, a stack of flailing limbs in a winter coat.

My breath, which had been coming out in pale puffs of steam, suddenly stopped in my lungs. My mind went to a thousand different places. Maybe Melchior saw right through me and decided to call back. Maybe it was a relative, calling to give me another boring, half-baked birthday wish.

The thought of Hanschen snuck out of my mind, out from the corner I had shoved it into. Maybe he was calling to wish my a happy birthday. Maybe then I could tell him in whispers into the receiver, that I’ve been seeing him everywhere. His face was in the clouds, his name spelled out on the books on my shelf, his voice spoke to me as I slept, ushering me to dream of him.

“Do you know a kid named Max?”


	18. Chapter 18

“Does your mom mind if I smoke?”

Max had pulled the pack of Newports from his pocket so smoothly and silently I didn’t even notice until he was shaking them a few feet from my face. The same pack that he had bought with me a couple nights before.

I looked over my shoulder at the illuminated window, behind which my mother was sat at the dining table, grading piles of work that she had been putting off until now. Paper on paper of children’s names repeated over and over in shaky cursive.

“No, she won’t mi-”

But he was already lighting it. He puffed out a cloud of menthol, shaking his head like he was disappointed. From where I sat on the front steps of my porch, he looked like a shadow. When he called me the day before, he sounded like one too. All whispers and nervous sighs, explaining how big of a pain in the ass it was to find my number. At least he didn’t pretend like he had forgotten what had happened. He remembered, it was on the tip of his tongue with every word he said, tainting every action with the moonlit memories. I couldn’t look at him, pacing back and forth just beyond the reach of the porch light. Because everytime I looked at him, I thought of the kiss.

“That’s kinda cool,” He muttered, more into his cigarette than to me. “Your birthday on New Years.”

I nodded, my hand subconsciously tugging on the loose threads of my sweater, “Yeah. I get a lot of joint Christmas-birthday presents though. So I feel kinda cheated by that.”

A quick smile was all I got from Max before he sat down, next to me but not too close. Not so close that something might happen. I hold my breath without thinking, waiting for him to speak. But he doesn’t. His presence is enough for a moment or two. “Well you’re eighteen now,” He said after a sky-filled silence. “You can do anything you want.”  
“Not anything, “ I was quick to reply, making Max nod in agreement.  
“Nope. Not anything,” He looked at me. Not like he was sizing me up this time, but like he was trying to understand me. And then suddenly, in a puff of smoke he asked, “How did you know?”

He blurted it out, so black and white. I admired him for that.

“Know about what?” I asked, pretending to be naive when we both knew he would ask that. The question had been there, floating in the air between us since his truck pulled into my driveway. Begging to be asked.

Another puff. He was burning through the cigarette like it was nothing. “Know that you were…” He bounced the thought around in his head. He knew what to say, but not how to say it.

I knew too. But I needed someone else to say it. I needed him to tell me.

“Into guys, I guess.”  
“The thing is that I don’t actually know,” I replied, as if trying to emulate his honesty. “How did you know?”

He looked small. Smaller than before. Like his chest had sunken in and his spine had collapsed. As thin as paper and as pale as it too, he stared down at the holes in his jeans. “I think I always knew. I figured everyone else knew too. That’s why things were so horrible.” He breathed heavy, small chest barely moving beneath thick layers, jacket over hoodie over shirt, like he was trying to hide something. “I think you helped me realize it though.”

“Me?”

He rolled his eyes, shining like sunken moons. “Yeah, you. Remember Mrs. Gutierrez's third grade class?” While I nodded, he took another drag. “Well she had the desks facing each other. And you sat across from me. And I would watch you work and draw and I just thought you were so cool cause you could draw 3D shapes and had sharks on your pencil case.” He leaned back on his heels, sorta tilting back and forth, like a breeze would knock him over. “ Took me a while to realize that it was an actual crush. But when I did, a lot of things got a lot worse.”

I stared at him, trying my best to remember little Max Von Trenk, before he was weird kid Max Von Trenk or gay Max Von Trenk. I wondered which of those titles came first, and if one was an assumed synonym with the other.

“So thank you for the other night,” He chokes out finally. Between nervous glances, he nodded to me. “It was sorta nice to have you… ya know, be there.”

“You’ve kissed other guys?” I said before I could think to stop myself. It was so foreign. So strange. I thought he and I were the only people in the world to have discovered this strange new ritual of kissing another boy. Like it was a disease I had been the first to catch.

He nodded, biting the inside of his lip and sucking in a hesitant chuckle. “ I mean, yeah. Haven’t you?”

I shook my head, not lifting my chin up from where it rested on my knees, hugging myself to conserve heat and to avoid looking at Max. He sat down next to me on the step, eyes suddenly wide. Like he was afraid of something, “Wait, you’re kidding, right?” Another shake of the head. “Well you’ve kissed girls then?”

Another shake.

Max’s voice cracked with panic, “Holy fuck that was your first kiss,” A hesitant nod and he ran his hand through his hair, practically hyperventilating, “Fuck, Ernie, I’m sorry. You should have told me. I wouldn’t have-“

“No it’s okay,” He looked at me, eyes even bigger, which I didn’t think was possible. “I liked it. I’m glad it was you.”

A few deep breaths and Max had leaned back. He was still tense, but not in a complete panic. “I’m glad you like it then,” Another deep sigh before he tried to chuckle off his anxiety. “Are you trying to tell me there are no gay guys at your all boys school? That’s a gay paradise.”

“If there are, they keep it a good secret.”

Max took a final drag of the cigarette before crushing it beneath the heel of his combat boot. “There definitely aren’t any around here. I’ve looked. All the guys I’ve ever been with are just passing through. Their  either here on vacation or graduated years ago and come back to visit, like you.”

He suddenly sat up again, as if his brain was working at a thousand miles an hour and he was attempting to keep up. I couldn’t help but to sit up to, to watching him curiously as he continued on, “Ernie, I’ll be here this summer after we graduate. And when you come back to visit for like spring break and stuff, I’ll be around. If you want, I’ll always be available.” He took a breath and quickly corrected himself, “Only if you want to of course.”

I looked at him. Really looked at him. His long eyelashes and his cheeks flushed pink from cold and his heavy, black lined lids. God, he’s so beautiful there, in the harsh yellow light of my front porch that made his ginger hair look gold.

He smiles and for a second, he’s Hanschen. His pale pink lips are Hanschen’s. His eyes changed from pale blue to grey, like Hanschen’s.

And like that, he was all Hanschen. His skin was dotted with moles, his hair was pushed up and away effortlessly, a pair of circular glasses sat on the bridge of his nose. And the little nervous chuckle he let out was deep and wistful, like Hanschen’s.

But then the illusion faded.

“I’m sorry, Max. I can’t do that.”

His smile fell, staring at my face with something between sadness and acceptance. “I get it,” He muttered out, eyes cast to the space between our legs, “You’re not just a convenient fling, if that’s what it is.”

“It’s not that.”

He’s quiet, besides the nervous tapping of his nails on the wood beneath us. Like a mouse, he tried to tuck himself away in the baggy fabric of the layers in layers he was wearing, attempting to disappear between flannel and hoodie. “ Then who is he?”

When I look back at him, he’s nodding to himself a little smile gracing his lips. “What’s his name?” He shrugged like it was a fact. Confused, I stared back at him, my mind refusing to fully connect the words he had been saying. “I’ve fallen for too many shitty guys to think that it’s anything else.”  He shrugged again, “I’m not saying that he’s shitty. He’s probably amazing. I’m just saying that I understand.”

I nod and suck my bottom lip between my teeth. Even though his name had been doing nothing but running through my mind, I couldn’t bring myself to actually say it.

His gaze was different, softer. He looked at me with gentle, sympathetic eyes. If it weren’t for Hanschen, I could let myself fall for him. I could allow myself to smile back, lean over to kiss him, talk to him. I would let myself get to know him, all his quirks and his favorite bands and his best daydreams and whether or not he likes his parents or cable television or romantic comedies.

I think in another universe, I would shrug my shoulders and love Max. In a universe where Hanschen transferred to another school, or maybe he didn’t get caught under the bleachers, or maybe he never passed me those notes that made my heart hurt.

“I should get going,” Max stood up and brushed off the front of his jeans. “You’re probably heading back to school soon, huh?”

“I’m heading back day after tomorrow, school starts up on Monday.”

Max looked around, as if expecting someone or something to pop out of the tree line, emerge from the endless fields still sprinkled with last week’s snow. But nothing came, so he stuffed his hands into his jean pockets. “If you ever wanna talk, call me, alright? I’m not at school most days so you can call anytime,” He looked up at me and he looked like little Max. Before he was weird Max. Pink cheeks and smooth edges and a little shine that still muttered ‘I’m gonna be an astronaut when I grow up’. “It’s nothing romantic or anything like that. Just if you need someone to understand.”

I nodded and watched him begin to shuffle off to his truck, parked crooked in my driveway. He was about to take off, I thought. These could be the last moments I saw Max ever again.

Or at least this Max, smiling Max, my Max.

“His name is Hanschen.”

He turned back to look at me, stopping right before he got to his truck. I couldn’t see his face anymore but I could hear a smile in his voice as he replied. “That’s a pretty cool name. I hope he’s everything you want and more, Ernie.”


	19. Chapter 19

Seats were rarely empty at Faraday. And they were never empty without explanation. Someone in the class always knew where the missing student in question was. But when the winter holidays ended and the campus filled once more with students, Hanschen was nowhere to be seen.

There were hints of Hanschen. A shock of blond hair that caught my eye on the walk to my dorm. Or swearing that he was the shadow skirting down the hall on my way to class. 

But I never could catch his eye. I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t trying to. 

On the rare occasion he was in class, he sat with his head down. He said nothing, did nothing, just dutifully took down the notes and turned in homework and made less noise than falling snow.

If I hadn’t been looking for him, I would have thought he disappeared. Just like before we had met. He became a figment of my imagination, a ghost haunting the desks that used to belong to my Hanschen.

But I wasn’t looking for him. I swore to myself that I wasn’t. 

I didn’t have the time to. I managed to shove the idea of Hanschen away most of the time, push him into the corner of my mind, taping onto his memory the label ‘Warning: Dangerous’. 

Instead, I spent my hours in the studio. A dank, neglected room in the main building basement, remaining untouched since the school opened while all other classrooms had been updated every few years. But none of the outrageous amounts of money that Faraday demanded in tuition went to the room technically called 00, but Mrs. Schmidt lovingly called The Studio. 

Mostly underground, the Studio was always much colder than the rest of the building, which made it an pleasantly chilly paradise in the summer, but a walk in freezer in the winter, when New England weather already made the world inhospitable. 

So I made the final touches to by portfolio there, my breath puffing out of me like I was a smoke machine and as many layers of clothing as I could manage while staying mostly mobile. 

I lost track of the hours spent down there, holding up my sketchbook to find some good light from the old windows, beaten and cracked from years of facing where the golf team practiced. 

I had no time to even think about Hanschen by the end of the week, with Schmidt breathing down my neck, double and triple checking that I showed enough variety and flexibility and ‘framed my strengths’ without ‘calling out my weaknesses’. 

With glasses low on her nose, she flipped through the pages, tisking and shrugging, muttering under her breath that I could have used a brighter purple or had better shading on my charcoal piece. 

I was expecting her to point out all the things I had to fix for the fifth time, but instead she closed the shiny blue folder and pressed her fingertips into it like she was using it to pray. “How about we go into town, send this out, and get a cup of coffee, Ernst.”

She kept one copy for herself, muttering that if I became famous she wanted to take at least some credit. The other six she sealed in thick manilla envelopes, passing them to me to write the addresses of colleges across the country. She flipped through her own copy as we sipped our coffee, finally pointing out to me what I had done well now that it was all over. 

“Your placement of the lupin is really beautiful, Ernst,” She pointed out the little springs of purple and periwinkle in my painting of a garden, modelled of off my mother’s own garden, just a bit more colorful. “It’s framed so well by the poppies. This is a piece to be proud of, Ernst.”

I nodded, wiping the crumbs of lemon cake from the corners of my mouth. “Thanks, Mrs. Schmidt. It took a while.”

“I can tell,” She took the folder back, flipping past a few more drawings before landing on one with a tap of her fingertip. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about this one, Ernst. But I didn’t want to ask you while you were editing because I was afraid you’d change it too much.” She turned the portfolio to me. “Who is this?”

It was my portrait piece. An arrangement of pencil lines and blurry shading that resembled the profile of a man just enough for me to pass it off as a portrait. 

“Not sure…” I looked over the scribbles that made up a jawline, tilted up as if welcoming the sun that had been hiding from Faraday since November. Then down to a neck, a hint of an adam’s apple made by a few quick pencil marks, then to a bare shoulder. The longer I stared at my drawings, the more they always felt like scribbles. 

I was beginning to think that I probably should have cleaned up my style a bit before turning in the portfolio when Schmidt cleared her throat, pulling me back to the real world. “What do you mean not sure, who did you have model?”

“I had Melchior model for me,” I looked over the haphazardly sketched strands of hair. “But that’s not him. He doesn’t have that jaw. And his hair is wavy.”

“I know what Melchior looks like, Ernst,” She prodded at the portraits face, head turned so eyes could not be seen. “But who’s he?”

“I dunno, I think I must’ve seen her in a dream or something,” I kept my eye on the paper, taking notice of she few spots I wished I had made a line a bit straighter or a bit more curved. 

I tried to recall the night I drew the portrait. The only night where I was up later than Moritz, when I woke up at two in the morning with this image burnt into my brain. I was bent over my sketch pad until the sun rose, being late to my first period class because I had to get this faceless bundle of lines onto paper. 

Between sips of coffee, Schmidt spoke. “You know, it’s believed that people can’t think up new faces. You can't imagine a face you’ve never seen,” She raised her eyebrows, a little knowing grin. “Must be someone you know.”

“Hey, Ernst, you busy?”

Just as Schmidt finished her sentence, Moritz’s crumbling ruin of a voice chimed in over her, it’s owner hurrying at us with a stiff walk. His jacket was falling off of one shoulder, revealing a wrinkled sweater beneath that I recognized from the floor of our dorm room.  “A little, Mor-“

“He’s not busy, Mr. Stiefel,” Schmidt pulled the portfolio up to study more intently. She looked at me over the rim of her wire glasses. “Go on, Ernst. I’ve got some work to do.”

I stood, bowing my head and thanking her a few more times for buying coffee before I pulled my coat back on and followed Moritz back out to the sidewalk. He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, his hands shoved into his pocket as his whole body vibrated there on the pavement. Like he was afraid that if he paused and untensed his body something bad would happen. So he stayed wound tight, looking up at me with sunken eyes.

“Hey, Moritz, what’s up?”

Moritz pointed a pale finger across the street to the small bakery that was always packed wall to wall with couples during the weekend. “I came down with Melchior to meet up with Wendla. But I got ditched and now they’re flirting over fucking croissants.”

“She doesn’t hate him?”

He shook his head, “No, but I sure do.”

Without missing a beat, Moritz sat down on the curb, his long thin legs bending to his chest like spider legs. “You can go back in if you want, Ernst. I just didn’t want to be alone for too long. But if you were really busy-”   
“I’m not busy,” I sat down on the cold sidewalk beside him, my eyes roaming the narrow street. Plenty of familiar faces, Faraday colors, busy locals avoiding herds of teenagers. And plenty of couples. 

“I hate coming down here on Sundays,” Moritz spoke up, as if reading my mind. His eyes were also trained on the girl in a purple sweater leading a Faraday boy into the bakery, a smile on her face and her hand in his. “I hate all the couples.”

“Why?”

With a chuckle, Moritz’s eyes moved down the street. “I’m mad that they get this, ya know? They get to have it.”

“Have what?” 

“Have that,” With a shaky breath he continued, his voice nasally and rigid. “Have each other.”

I nodded in agreement, my heart heavy with the last words Hanschen had said to me. “Why can’t I get what everyone else gets?”

He looked at me, eyes wide with knowing in their deep, dark sockets. “Yeah. Like that.”

“Have you gone on a date recently, Moritz?”

He shook his head, dark tangles bouncing around his temples. “No. Never. What about you?”

“Never.”

“But you could.”

He was still staring across at the bakery. Through the front windows we could see the tables filled with love-struck teens. If I looked hard enough, I could spot Wendla and Melchior in the center of them all, their hands intertwined on the table top as Melchior talked about what must’ve been something incredibly stupid or amazingly pretentious. And to my surprise, Wendla watched him with a smile and a nod. 

He really did have a way with girls, or maybe that poem worked.  “So could you,” I shrugged to Moritz, not taking my eyes off of the giggles and flirtation.

“Nah, not me,” He ran his palms over his bony knees. “Girls here would rather date guys from their own school. And if they’re gonna date a Faraday guy, they want a real Faraday guy.”

“What’s a real Faraday guy?”

He pointed at a group of blue uniforms crossing the street a few stores down, yelling to one another, their laughs echoing down the cobblestone. “You know. The red blooded, apple pie American guy. Those are the guys that people expect when you go to Faraday.”

“Well, you’re still a Faraday guy. You go to Faraday.”

A little chuckle escaped Moritz's pale lips, “Barely.”

I ran my thumb over the raw skin of my knuckles, almost blue with cold. I recalled the past four years of knowing Moritz. How he was always separate from all of our classmates in my mind. When I thought of Moritz, I didn’t think of Faraday. I thought of frayed rope and three in the morning and unbrushed hair. But never as one of my shiny, smiling classmates. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mori-“

“How have I not dropped out already?”

He was staring up at me now, tired eyes looking at me expectantly as he continued, “I’m wondering the same thing, Ernst.”

“Well how did you get in?”

“My name.” He looked at me over his shoulder with raised eyebrows. When all I did was look back blankly, he continued. “You know those bricks in the entrance hall? The ones with the names of all the founders? One of them says M. V. Stiefel,” He pointed to himself, jabbing a thumb at the middle of his chest. “My great great great grandfather fought in the civil war with Edgar Faraday. They were buddies or something. He helped Faraday build the school after the war ended. Then he went and created the bank. My great great grandfather was in the first graduating class. Then he took over the bank. Then his son went to Faraday and took over the bank, then his son, then my father,” He went to work picking a tiny piece of gravel from the sole of his shoe. “I’m the fifth Moritz Victor Stiefel to attend Faraday. I don’t have any other option.”

For a second or two I stared at Moritz. I never expected him

to be from of those old money New England families. But truth is, I never bothered to give Moritz much thought. I never worried about how he got here when I assumed he’d be leaving soon. “Well what would you rather do?” I said once my voice came back. 

He shrugged at me, narrow shoulders shaking like he was freezing to the bone. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. When I was born they guaranteed me a name, guaranteed me Faraday, guaranteed me a job. I was born with everything assumed. I don’t know what I’d do if I were given a choice. ”

I up from my seat on the cold curb, extending my hand down to Moritz. “Come on, you wanna walk around? Get your mind off of them?”

His hand, thin and skeletal reached up to mine. I pulled him up to his feet, gesturing for him to begin the long walk back up to campus, a smile promising that I was the expert of getting my mind off of things when the echoes of Hanschen’s voice stated otherwise. 


	20. Chapter 20

The bright red of the Schwinn Searcher stood out against the dull grey sky. Untouched from the beginning of the first semester, but still shiny, still new. Still unwon.

Maybe people just weren’t guessing. Or maybe the boys walking by figured it would be easier to just call their parents and ask them to buy the newest bike on the market. No effort or assembly required.

“Isn’t it a little cold for milkshakes?” Mortiz’s voice pulled my attention away from the bike and to my classmate, a few steps ahead as if he hadn’t immediately noticed that I had stopped. Neither did I to be quite honest. 

“Want to go in for one anyway?”

He tilted his head, staring at me like I was speaking in Latin. “Did you not just see me shivering?”   
Before he could say more, I pushed open the door, the little bell above it ringing, “My treat,” Moritz, well known for not being able to say no to anyone, gave a defeated sigh that seemed to shake his ribcage and walked through the door I was propping open. “Actually,” I followed behind him into the warm, sweet smelling shop. “Your family owns the biggest bank in New England so you can treat.”   
“We don’t own it anymore. Now we just own the largest share of it.”

“And your dad’s Chairman?”

“Coincidence.”

The front of the shop was as full as usual, boys in smart looking uniforms wandering about, some filling their baskets with enough candy to last them the week, others stuffing their coat pockets and looking over their shoulders to make sure no one saw. At least, no one who was a snitch. But the milkshake counter that would become full in the spring was empty, except for the bored looking girl standing behind the counter.

There had only ever been three workers of the shop since I first walked through the doors, the first being the owner, an older man who stood as sentinel of the cash register and greeted every customer with a Santa Claus like cheer. The other two were teenage girls, a pair of twins no more than one or two years younger than me. The boys at Faraday claimed to have methods of telling them apart, some citing that one was the “hotter” twin. Some would separate them as “the one with the bigger tits” and “the other one”.

I opted instead to just read their name tags. 

The name tag on the girl staring off absentmindedly behind the milkshake counter read ‘Thea’. She seemed a bit surprised when we approached, jumping a bit when I cleared my throat. “Hi, can I get a strawberry milkshake please.”

“And a chocolate one too,” Moritz added in, coughing out a “please” when I stared him down. 

‘Thea’ nodded, “Of course, one second.” She then craned her long, thin neck back and raised her voice to call through the open door behind her. “Hey, Hansi. Can you grab me the strawberry and chocolate?”

“Who’s getting a milkshake in this weather?” A too familiar voice responded before there was the sound of the wheels of a desk chair. And then before I could think to look away, there he was, pushing himself towards the open door in a rolling desk chair, leaning back to look at the girl. He has a smile on his face that quickly disappeared when our eyes met, both of us wishing the other would disappear along with it.

Hanschen looked different in the quick glimpse I got of him. He had been smiling, his hair brushed, his glasses clean, wrapped up in a warm looking cable knit sweater. He had a book in his hand that he quickly closed before standing and walking back into the room where I could not see him. I could only hear his voice, getting further and further away as he spoke. “Get it yourself. I’m going upstairs.”

Then the sound of footsteps ascending wood stairs and he was gone, almost ghostlike. If Moritz has not been staring too with big, shocked eyes, I would have thought I was hallucinating. 

Thea rolled her eyes before walking back to the room Hanschen had been in, returning shortly after with two buckets of frosted over ice cream. 

We were silent while she made the shakes, save for the rustling of me digging through my bag, bent over the canvas backpack in a mad dash through loose papers and broken pencils. 

“Here’s the chocolate,” She slid a styrofoam cup towards Moritz, but before she could hand over the second, I was leaning over the counter, thrusting towards her desperately a little blue paperbound, the word ‘PLATH’ written on the crumpled cover, creases showing exactly why I got it for three dollars. 

“Can you give this to Hanschen? Please?”

She stared at me with confusion, shake in hand. Stumbling over her words, she replied. “Do you know Hansi?”

“School friends,” I gestured at her with the book one more time. “Please give this to him. Tell him Ernst dropped it off.”

She nodded, hesitantly taking the paperback from my grip. When she was sure I wasn’t going to lunge across the counter and stab her or poison her via paper, she handed me the milkshake. “Sure. I’ll tell him.” 

I fluttered through paying her, my heart pounding in my chest and my breath coming through shallow. It was like I had just ran a marathon to hand her a book of poetry. The entire time she didn’t speak. Neither did I and neither did Moritz until we had left the store. 

“What was that about?” He asked, his voice coming through in tremors. “Why was he in there?”

I took a sip of my shake, the cold giving me an instant headache against the freezing wind. “I don’t know” I grimaced through the pain. I wish I had more time to proofread the note I had scribbled on the inside, because I was sure that Hanschen was inside, scoffing at my spelling error as I shuffled down the street. 

  
  
  



	21. Chapter 21

“Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle. Gulps and recovers its small altitude,”

 

I got lost once in the forest behind my house when I was a kid. Maybe six or seven, when the house still had a shine to it and some time before falling apart.  I went out before the sun had gone down, but by the time I realized how far I had wandered, stars were already dotting the night sky. 

 

“Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo...”

 

I was too young to really understand what was happening, and how cold nights were in the Californian winter. So I found myself sat under a tree most of the night, watching the sky turn from dark blue to black and feeling the temperature slowly drop in the everpresent wind swirling my leafy sanctuary. 

 

“Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean”

 

I remember holding myself, hugging my arms to my sides and praying that the harsh coldness leave my ribcage. Filling my chest as if it were as hollow as the ancient trees singing melodies made of wind. 

 

“In you, ruby. The pain. You wake to is not yours.”

 

When Mom found me, I was shivering, knees to my chest, bobbing in and out of consciousness. She had been searching for hours just to find me, skin gone pale under the shade of a dying spruce. 

 

“Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses. With soft rugs----”

 

She rushed me inside under the concerned shouts of my Grandpa, before he was in the wheelchair and he could follow my mother upstairs, cradling my tiny freezing form against her chest. I remember his hand against my little palm, attempting to rub warmth back into me. 

 

“ _The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address…”_

 

That was really all I could remember from that night, layers of blankets and my mother’s eyes full of fear. But I could remember the story as if it happened yesterday with how many times it had been told to me. A warning, a learning moment, something to laugh about after a few glasses of wine when Mom decided to recount the most terrifying moments of her life. It was supposed to teach me to tell people where I’m going, to keep track of time, not to get too distracted, not to wander off into the cold.

 

“ _Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well…”_

But apparently I had learned nothing, sitting on the freezing rocks beside the still waters of the cove. My ass had gone numb about half an hour earlier, when I first got here, my back turned to the hill so I couldn’t see Hanschen coming until he was right there, snapping twigs and kicking pebbles with every step he took. 

 

 I must have looked tiny, my knees pulled to my chest and my chin tucked to my knees, like I was trying to fold into myself. Or I was trying to recreate that frightening January night. 

 

“Any reason you circled this particular section?”

 

“I did that before I knew I was going to give it to you.” 

 

I heard Hanschen take another step closer, standing five or six feet away. Like he was keeping his distance, preparing to run if I gave the sign that I was going to blow. 

 

“Why’d you give it to me?” 

 

Holding out my hand, I turned to look at him for the first time. He looked up from the pages, peering at me over the top of his glasses. But his gaze were obscured by the few loose strands of blond falling over his eyes. “To call a truce.”

 

He took another few steps, not close enough for me to touch him yet. Just close enough for me to see that he was staring at me intently, like he was a researcher waiting for his subject to move.

 

Like he was in control.

  
And he was, holding my entire heart between the lines of poetry in his hands. 

 

“I thought you hated me,” he said, his voice genuine and honest, like he came for answers he had been asking for years. 

 

“I never hated you.”

 

He nodded, his eyes now cast to the ground. He searched for a stance to take, a hold on the situation that I already understood was slipping away from both of us rapidly.

 

But I gave up my control. I gave it up when Max kissed me through the darkness. I gave it up when I handed the girl serving shakes my note, begging Hanschen to join me and forgo any sanity he may have left. 

 

“It sounded like you hated me,” The solidness slipped out of his voice and he fell back into the timid whispers of secrets. “‘I’m nothing like you. And I don’t want to be’.”

 

My own words bounced back at me with malice. I didn’t realize how cruel I was until I heard it myself. Then I could actually hear the red hot venom that I had been casting out onto Hanschen. “I didn’t hate you. I was lying to myself.”

 

Finally Hanschen looked back at me and I noticed that I had been staring at him, not daring to take my eyes off of his face in case I missed a glance. “We’re a lot more alike than I thought.”

 

He nodded over and over, as if trying to wrap his head around my words. This Hanschen was not the one I had first met, not the one who raced me up the hill or smiled at me in the halls. That Hanschen would never be left as speechless as this one. So I continued, my mind rattling off all the words I had been wishing I had said for more than a month now. “And I know how much you hate liars.”

 

“Yes but I don’t hate you,” His eyes looked me over, quickly flicking over my face, careful not to hesitate anywhere, less he show more weakness than he was already. “I could never hate you.”

 

I nodded. At the heart of it, that was all that had to be settled. We could have walked off, back to our dorms and into the warmth of our beds. But when both of us remained unmoving, Hanschen tried his best to say more. 

 

“The reason I left my old school was-”

 

“You don’t need to say it,” I cut him off after noticing the grimace he was speaking with. Like it was bringing him real pain to speak. “I know already. I was told.”

 

“Who told you?”

 

His head whipped towards me, now accusatory. His face was painted with an honest fear I had never seen in him before. Like he was bracing for the impact of the name. “Some kid named Bobby,” I let the gunshot ring before continuing. “Melchior took me to meet hi-”

 

“That asshole!” Hanschen’s voice broke through in rough frustration, his free hand curled into a fist. “God that fucking prick!” He turned back to me, pushing back his hair so I could see his eyes clenched in anger. “He’d kill to get his way. He’d say anything to cover his own ass that selfish prick.”

Seeing my open mouthed confusion, Hanschen continued. “Sophomore year. Bobby was my first kiss. My first everything. That scumbag convinced me to trust him. Swore to me that he’d never hurt me, that he’d never tell a soul.” He began to pace, moving toward the water in hurried steps. “I trusted him. Then he ruined me and Adam. Adam was the only person at that school who understood anything about me. He was the only genuine person within twenty miles of that shitty shitty school.” He suddenly stopped moving, standing still as he demanded. “All to cover his own ass. To make sure I don’t tell. Or in some act of fucking revenge because I made him realize that he’s a faggot. But I’d never tell anyone. Because I keep my promises. I keep my fucking promises.”

 

Then, his stillness became weak, crumpling in on himself as he stood defeated. “But he ruined that. And he’s ruined this too. I can transfer schools. I can change everything about me. I can be as straight as a fucking arrow. But he has to ruin everything good that could ever happen to me.” 

 

“What in this has he ruined?”

 

Now Hanschen was slipping, losing his grip on the conversation, on the words coming out of his mouth, on the confused frown his face had slipped into.

“He made you…”

 

Nothing. The words had slipped from his brain as well as his mouth, leaving him sputtering and staring down at the ground beneath his dress shoes. 

 

“Whatever Bobby did, he didn’t change how I feel about you. He didn’t ruin anything,” I let out a sigh. “I said a lot of shit that wasn’t true. Shit I didn’t believe.” I looked up from the waters and saw that Hanschen was looking back at me. For the first time, our eyes met. “I did it because-”

 

“You don’t need to explain yourself, Ernst. I know why,” He said, a smile almost breaking over his stressed exterior. “I honestly would have done the same thing.”

 

I nodded over and over, unable to take my eyes off of him. “I promise I’ll never do it again.”

 

“I know. I trust you.”

 

For a few moments more, our gazes stayed there, locked on each other’s faces like we hadn’t seen one another in years. I saw dots on his cheeks that I had never seen before, wrinkles that had formed in his brow as his smile grew. 

 

“You never read the last bit of the poem.”

Hanschen jolted out of his absent minded staring and looked back at the book of poetry in his hands. “It’s pretty weird. I didn’t know you read this kinda stuff.”

 

“I wouldn’t if you almost didn't force me to start reading in general,” I gestured at the book with an open hand. “Go on.”

 

“You are the one,” After a shuddered exhale, he continued. “Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.” He looked between my face and the book, as if trying to connect dots that didn’t exist.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

I shake my head, finally moving to scoot down the rock, now leaning against the cold surface and stretching out my legs that had fallen asleep after all the waiting. “I just liked it. Thought you would too.”

 

Hanschen nodded, looking over the book some more, “Well. You were right. I do like it. A lot.”

 

There was a silence, a pause between us where we didn’t look at each other, instead of studying our surroundings, finding a new comfort in the person who we had previously been avoiding. 

 

I was comfortable here, with him, in the cold and the wind and the dull grey sky. He made it all feel so insignificant. 

 

“If you want to leave, you can,” He said in a voice barely audible. If I hadn’t been straining to hear him, I wouldn’t have noticed. “I don’t hate you, I’m not mad. But you don’t have to stick around with me. Don’t feel like you have to-”

 

“I don’t feel like I have to do anything,” I pushed myself off of the rock and took a step closer to him. “I want to stick around you.”

 

He was fast, as if afraid that I was going to slip away if he didn’t quickly put his hands on my shoulders and push himself up against me, pressing his lips to mine. 

 

But his kiss wasn’t forceful or rushed. It happened so smoothly, in one fluid motion we went from apart together, making me realize how long I had been waiting to kiss him. I felt like I was melting into him, who I noticed after a few moments was on his tiptoes so his lips could reach mine. 

 

But that didn’t matter, neither did my hands fumbling to cup his cheeks and his tightening grasp on the shoulders of my sweater. All there was in that moment, in that universe, were his lips pressing against mine, kissing me with such breathless fluidity.  

 

I wondered wordlessly how long I had been waiting to find my place, to find this moment, to be kissed by Hanschen Rilow.

 

I didn’t want anything else. I didn’t want to run and hide, or to beg for more. I just wanted him, plain and simple, to kiss me like this until I we had to be back up in our dorms, and then to sneak into my room while Moritz was asleep and kiss me some more. 

 

I didn’t want time to freeze because I knew this would happen again. I wanted time to speed up because I wanted to know how many times and in how many different ways he would kiss me. I wanted to go through the rest of my days in fast-forward, waiting for another kiss from Hanschen and appreciating those moments when the kiss came. 

 

And I wanted to appreciate when he pulled away, sinking down from his tiptoes and pressing his forehead to the side of my face. He was breathing hard, warm breath hitting my neck as my grip on his waist loosened to my fingertips running little circles over the wool of his Faraday sweater, the feeling of his body heat under the fabric being the closest thing to the touch of his skin. 

 

“I can’t tell if I’m very happy or very horny,” I muttered between pants, more to myself than to him. 

 

With a chuckle, Hanschen moved to the crook of my neck, where he pressed his lips to my skin before replying, “Both. I’m feeling both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey gang, I'm uhh,,,, back to writing because there was a HUGE influx of love being sent towards this fic so thank you so much. I'll try to update often but just so y'all know I have started college (I'm an acting major) so updating will still be sporadic at best, but I'm really trying because I just LOVE writing this story and people seem to like reading it so,,,, Thanks 4 that. Also, I've been writing fan fiction for four fucking years? that's a long time. Thanks to everyone who as been watching me progress and grow as a writer that entire time.


	22. Chapter 22

There was a certain level of amusement that came with watching people come and go every weekend from the comfort of a bed, concealed, peering down at busy little Faraday boys move out and away from the school in big packs of navy blue. Some of them were running, fighting, waving their arms and chasing one another in a weekend bliss, like doves fleeing from a cage. Others slumped out in packs, shuffling out as fast as they could. 

 

They looked like animals, escaping a prison that Hanschen and I sat in comfortably. 

 

His dorm was comfortable while his roommate was away, going on another date with a local girl who he had already gone on three dates with and still hadn’t kissed. We had laughed about how desperate high school boys were like we weren’t ones ourselves. 

 

Because we didn’t feel desperate. We felt gentle, slow moving, locking the door to Hanschen’s dorm every weekend when the building emptied so we could sit together, uninterrupted. Two ghosts haunting the abandoned Chancey hall.

 

Hanschen had been sitting on his bed since I arrived that morning. And as the hours crept by into afternoon, he had kept his position there, sitting up with his back against the wall, his legs curled up on the mattress beneath him under the thick quilt that his grandmother had made him. He had only moved when I forced him to, curling up on the bed with him and pulling him down into a messy embrace of limbs and blankets on a bed that was not made for two full grown men.

 

But when I got up, he went back to his position, sitting up, glasses perched on his nose, reading his book in content silence and taking occasional sips of tea he had begged me to make him. 

 

I chose to sit at the desk across from him, rocking back and forth on the back legs of his roommates desk chair and pretending to be doing homework. But both Hanschen and I knew that I spent most of the day thinking of ways to get close to Hanschen and annoy him into giving me attention. And I held the suspicion that he wasn’t really reading anyway. 

 

This was the process that came with every weekend. And I loved it. 

 

“Hey, looks like the idiots are coming back up,” I muttered Saturday, closing in on the end of February, as I peered out the window that overlooked the walk from the main campus to our hall. Three little navy blue dots stumbled down the path. I could recognize them by the puff of black mess that was Mortiz’s hair. As they got closer I saw that they were laughing, Melchior, Georg, and Moritz. Laughing and talking like old friends. 

 

“Well they weren’t gone long.” Hanschen leaned forward a bit to look out as well. “I’m glad they’ve taken a liking to Moritz. From what you’ve said, I think that’s something he needed.”

 

“He’s taken to filling my place well.” 

 

Hanschen’s gaze softened. He set down his book, open to the page he left off on.  “No one could fill your place, Ernst. Don’t say that.”

 

I exhaled, my breath fogging up the window as I watched the three teenage boys get closer and closer to our sanctuary. “They’ll be here soon.”

 

“Then get over here,” I looked over to see Hanschen shifting over to the side, opening his arms and a little spot beside him among the blankets. Without a second thought, I climbed onto the mattress, stumbling over his legs and landing beside him with my back to the wall. A moment later he was pulling me into him, pressing his lips to my forehead as I curled into his chest, my head resting on his chest so I could feel his heartbeat in my skull. 

 

“How’s the book?”

 

He sighed, his chest that had become my pillow sinking up and down at a steady rhythm. I never realized how deeply Hanschen braehead until I was there. “It’s fine. It’s a little tedious but-”

 

“But you like tedious.”

  
Hanschen chuckled. “Fuck, you know me too well.”

 

I pressed my face into the warmth of his hoodie, breathing in deeply the scent of lavender fabric softener and ice cream and Hanschen. His hand absentmindedly moved to my hair, where his he had already made a mess of my usually obedient waves. The pads of his fingers ran through the chestnut strands, messaging into my scalp and practically lulling me to sleep. “Want me to read it to you?” He muttered, his legs tangling with mine beneath the quilt. 

 

I smiled, mumbling a faint “yeah” into his chest. 

 

He cleared his throat and continued in a small voice. “When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy,” He let out a little chuckle that came from his chest, shallow and amused. “ It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.” A little content hum and he pressed his lips back to my head. 

 

“If that was the case then I’d never tell a single person your name.”

 

Another chuckle and Hanschen whispered into my hair. “Are you saying that you like me immensely.”

 

“Immensely.”

 

His hand moved up to cradle the back of my neck, sending chills down my spine as fingertips toyed with the little wisps of hair. “Good. Then the feeling is mutual.”

 

There was silence for a moment, then he spoke up again, his voice coming out in a whisper reverberating from his chest. “There’s two-hundred and fifty seven”

 

“What?” I boosted myself up against the wall with my elbow, propping myself up to look at his face, calm and content.

 

“Paper birds in the jar,” His fingertips moved in little circles at the base of my neck, working around to my collarbone. “I folded them myself. But still no one’s been able to guess the exact number.” His eyes wandered back to mine, a little smile coming to his face as our gaze met. “Go guess two-fifty-seven so when the weather gets better and the ground thaws again, we can go out biking again. Maybe we won’t race so much…” He saw me wince at the memory. “But you need your own bike.”

 

“I have one back home.”

 

“But I’m not back home.”

 

I sat up completely now, leaning away from his touch so I could focus on his face. “How do you know the exact number?”

 

“My family owns the place,” He stretched out, his gaze and hands shifting to the book in his lap. “My dad works the front. My sister help in the store and my mother handles the business side of things.”

 

“How come I never saw you in there?” I pushed. “I’ve been going there for the past four years but I’ve never seen you. I would have remembered it.”

 

He smiled up at me, a little blush raising to his cheeks which was an achievement for me. “I don’t like working the front on weekends. When all the Faraday boys came down I’d get so flustered trying to complete their orders, I’d always fuck it up. Because I thought they were all so cute…” He shook his head like an embarrassed middle school girl admitting to her crush. “I never thought I’d be one of them. Or be laying in bed with the cutest one.”

 

“Shut up.”

 

“Make me, you cute fuck.”

 

And just like that we’re kissing again. The hot, breathless, sloppy kissing we get to do when he locks the door and we’re completely sure we’re alone. The lazy sort of kissing that is more about being close than it is about bringing our lips together. It was never anything more than this, our sloppy, hormonal, make out sessions full of awkward positions and tired lips and the fact that we could not care less about all of that and focussed instead on getting as much as we could, pressed together in the moment. 

 

Then a knock at the door, signalling our time was up and that I was needed by the council of jack-offs. 

 

I rolled off of Hanschen, who was quick to fix himself and sit upright, back to his position of reading all day. I peered in the little mirror hung on door, attempting to flatten out my hair and put back on the cardigan that Hanschen had taken off of me when I first came in.    
  


“You look like a fucking librarian.”

 

“Shut up.”

 

I opened the door and saw Moritz and Georg standing in the hallway, looking very tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum in their matching blazers. “Am I being requested?”

 

Georg nodded. “Yeah. Melchior wants you to come to his room.”

 

“What are you, his messengers? Why didn’t he get me himself?”

 

“Ouch!” Hanschen chuckled behind me, smiling while pretending to be deep in thought over his book. “Go easy on them, Ernst.”

 

“He just asked us to come and get you.”

 

“Asked or told?” Hanschen stifled a giggle while Georg und Moritz exchanged confused glances. “What’s it about?”

 

Moritz shrugged, looking to Georg to respond. I remember that. Being too scared that you were going to say  something wrong so you didn’t speak, just looked to Georg to do all the talking. But he could say he did it, he went with him, he moved up in the ranks. It was the way I had looked at Melchior freshman year, the way that Georg had looked at me sophomore and junior year. He must’ve felt good being the speaker now, I thought. I was so glad to be rid of the position of head lap-dog.

 

But I wasn’t dumb enough to say no to Melchior. 

 

“Fine,” I looked over my shoulder to Hanschen, beaming blissfully at his book. “I’ll be back for my stuff later.” 

 

“Bet you will,” He hummed and only looked up as I closed the door, a little spark still in his eyes from before.

  
  



	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning: Includes explicit and derogatory language

“This seat taken?”

I turned around Hanschen coming bounding at me, his face glowing with a smile that made him glow, cherub like in golden locks falling over the lenses of his glasses. He held under his arm half a dozen thick books taken from various shelves and  immediately set them down on the antique oak coffee table that I had been resting my feet on.

“Yes, it is actually.”

He chuckled and sat down anyway, next to me on the overstuffed loveseat that had been abused by generations of boys like me in the back of the library, hidden between shelves so you could only find it if you weren’t looking. “What are you up to?” He hummed, leaning over to peer over my shoulder at my philosophy textbook.

“I’m studying now, Hans. Why?”

“Well what are you doing tonight?”

“Studying more.” I tucked my legs up and underneath me, setting aside the book when I realized he wasn’t going to let me stay focussed for any longer. “Why?”

I looked up and saw Hanschen had moved closer to me, his knee now pressing up against my thigh. “Gage is gonna spend the night in August’s room. Pulling an all-nighter to study for the French test,” His hand, timid and slow, moved to my knee, fingertips pressing against the fabric of my khakis. “You should come spend the night.”

I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Hanschen, I don’t know. That’s risky. If someone hears us then we’ll both be kicked out by tomorrow morning.”

“I just want to sleep next to you, Ernst,” He pleaded, his voice dropping to barely a whisper. “Nothing you can get kicked out for. Just sleeping next to each other, the door locked, real quiet. And we’ll wake up before anyone comes by in the morning.” He nodded to himself, smiling. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Waking up early doesn’t sound nice.”

Hanschen nodded again, his hand moving up to rest on the top of my thigh. “Just come up late tonight. I promise I’ll let you get some studying in.”

“Sounds like a lie,” I let myself shift closer, my arm pressing against his chest. The little touches we got, fingertips and side of the arm, always felt electric, even though it was through layers and layers of restricting uniform. To me, nothing on this earth could be more intimate than the feeling of Hanschen Rilow’s chest up against my arm, warm and solid beneath a pressed white button-up.

I let my eyes fluttered closed and enjoyed this moment, this togetherness on the old couch that creaked and creased with every move. I could hear him breath for a moment or two, deep and from the chest. He breathed like the tide, I could feel his chest move in and out, sure that it would return just like it left. 

“Is this a good starting place for reading up on art?”

I felt him move away suddenly, shifting to the side and putting a few inches of space between us. I opened my eyes and saw him, whipping his head around rapidly to see if anyone had invaded our small library get away.

Hanschen always reminded me that there was a reality outside of us. 

He picked up one of the books, a big, hardcover book with a glossy cover reading ‘From Cave Art to Modern’ over a close up picture of the Mona Lisa’s eyes. The one below it boasted ‘The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings’ over a picture of JeanBaptiste Carpeaux’s Ugolino and his Sons. “I checked out ‘How to Read Art’ and ‘European Art History’ yesterday.”

“What’s with this sudden interest in the classics, Hans?” I chuckled, taking the one on the Met and flipping through the pages.

“Don’t look too hard, I just picked out the ones that were all pictures,” He fiddled with the corner of the page about the Death of Socrates. “And it’s what you do, Ernst. So I thought I might as well get some interest in it. Be able to keep up with any conversation about Michalangelo or whoever…”

“You don’t need to do that,” I sighed, curling back towards him without thinking. “You don’t need to know everything about-”

“There is no way I’ll know everything!” Hanschen laughed. “And besides, I got you into all the same stuff as me. I got you into literature and poetry. We could talk for hours about Hamlet but 

I don’t know periwinkle from lilac. That’s unfair to you. And I assume you’ll be coming to the lacrosse games once the season starts back up in spring.”

“What, do you want me to be your cheering girlfriend in the bleachers?”

He shook his head, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth. “Don’t say that, Ernst.” 

I nodded, shifting over again in an attempt to close the gap between Hanschen’s chest and the side of my arm. But he winced away like I was made of fire. “Ernst…” He said in a hissed whisper. “As much as I’d love to-”

“Then do it.”

And with that, the space between us disappeared. His chest to my arm, his knee to my thigh. It was a rush, but it felt safe.

It felt like home.

“Hey, Ernst, we need to talk.”

Hanschen jolted away from me with such fury I would have thought there was an earthquake between us. By the time I opened my eyes, he was already on the other side of the loveseat, clinging to the armrest and staring up at Melchior.

Melchior stood in the little entryway to our oasis in the shelves, his arms crossed and his face screwed up in a tight frown. “Ernst…” He said with venom in his voice. He raised his eyebrows expectantly, not needing to say anything more than that. When I stood, I noticed I was shaking, the warm spots on my body where Hanschen had been touching me aching. 

“Coming,” I muttered. I kept my eyes down and went to work picking up my books, trembling as I collected my things and followed Melchior through the rows of shelves. I only looked back once to see Hanschen, still frozen on the loveseat, his eyes locked on me as I disappeared around the corner.

God, he was scared. 

“You need to cut that shit out,” Melchior demanded through gritted teeth. He was looking straight ahead, walking with a directness I knew only came when he was furious. 

“What shit-”

He looked at me over his shoulder, eyes narrow. “Don’t play dumb, Ernst. You heard what Bobby said. You know what he is.”

“I wouldn’t trust everything Bobby says, Melchior.” 

I followed him out of the library like a dog begging for attention. “I don’t care what you were doing, but it looked suspicious as fuck. If you do that people are going to think that you’re like Hanschen.”

“What’s wrong with that?” 

Melchior suddenly stopped, his hands balled into fists at his sides. He still refused to look at me though, his eyes trained on the hallway ahead of us. “Ernst,” He hissed. “Do I have to explain everything to you? Just stop. People will think you’re a fag.”

“What if I was?”

“Don’t.” He shook his head over and over. “Just don’t. Don’t talk like that. You don't know what he'll do. He might rape you or... or tell people that you two are fucking or..."

"Why is that the worst thing?" My voice came out cracked and small. 

"I didn't think you were that dumb, Ernst."

And like that, he was gone, fast walking down the hall and out of the building, not even looking back to see if I was following. But I did. Not proudly, but I followed. 


	24. Chapter 24

“It came!” Melchior announced as me door flew open, hitting the pile of clothes Moriz left at the foot of his bed. I glanced up at Morit from my copy of Hamlet, raising my eyebrows to ask ‘Didn’t we lock the door?’. But it was too late, Melchior was stomping in, with Georg in tow, both of them carrying a small stack of letters. 

“My last letter came. Now we all have responses from all of our schools, right?” Melchior pushed aside my legs and sat with his legs crossed at the foot of my bed, not caring if he was putting his dirty shoes on my freshly washed sheets. Georg nudged a pile of books on Moritz’s bed to make himself a seat amongst the clutter. “Come on, lads. Pull ‘em out.”

I had kept my assortment of letters under my bed, among half empty sketch books. Only a few letters, as opposed to what looked like fifty in Melchior’s hands.

The four of us sat in silence for a moment or two, all opening the envelopes but not reading the letters. We had promised not to read them until we were all together.

“Who wants to go first?” Moritz asked in a weak voice, looking at the envelope in a dizzy way. 

“I will!” Georg announced, waving his pile of half a dozen letters above his head. 

“Now remember,” Melchior nodded before Georg’s itchy fingers went to work opening the letters. “Go in order of safety school to the one you want the most. Gotta build up.”

“Or build up to a big let down,” I added, smirking down at Georg’s fearful pale face.

“Love the optimism, Ernst,” Georg muttered before opening the first letter, his eyes glancing up and down the page. “Georgia Tech… Accepted.” Next letter. “Tulane… Accepted.” Next letter. “Dartmouth ...Denied.” We all sighed in disappointment. “MIT...Denied.” Another, louder grumble. “Cornell...Accepted!”   
Georg jumped to his feet in triumph, the rest of us leaping up to celebrate with him. Laughter and very masculine, back patting hugs went around the circle. “Hell yeah!” Melchior laughed. “I knew you would get in! Now let’s see if we’ll be bunking together or not,” He raised his pile and the attention moved to him, now standing in the middle of us all. 

He started reading, throwing the envelopes to the floor below him as he wandered in circles. “Berkley… Yes. University of Chicago… Yes. MIT...Yes. University of Michigan...Yes. Cornell… Yes. Yale… Yes. Stanford...Yes. Harvard...Yes. Princeton, drumroll please!”

The three of us slapped our hands against our thighs, watching Melchior read the letter over with the biggest shit eating grin. “We are pleased to accept Mr. Melchior Gabor into the Princeton University freshman class of nineteen-ninety six!” 

A chorus of cheering and jumping to our feet again, jumping around Melchior, who stood staring at the letter with a frozen smirk. 

“You’re gonna be playing lacrosse in New Jersey!” Georg squealed in joy, shaking Melchior wildly by his shoulders. 

Only then did Melchior leave his trance like state and playfully shove Georg away from him. “I’m in Pre-Law, dumbass. I’m gonna be reading a lot in New Jersey.”

“We saw those scouts at the play-offs, Melchior,” He turned to face me as I spoke, arms crossed. “We saw the Princeton logo on their jackets. Don’t act like that didn’t get you in.”

Melchior swung towards me, wildly pulling me into a spine crushing hug. “Ernst, you bastard.” He muttered into my shoulder, “Thank you, man.”

“For what?” I felt him sway back and forth, holding me tight as he moved.

“For getting me through this place,” When he finally pulled away and raised his voice enough for the others to hear, he punched my shoulder with a chuckle. “Go on, read yours next.”

I sat back on my mattress, feeling my breath catch in my chest as I took hold of my own stack. With trembling fingers, I opened the first. My vision was so blurry and nervous, I could barely make out the logo at the top. “Uh...Art Institute Chicago…” My eyes buzzed over the text to find the golden A word. “Accepted.”

Next letter, an even faster and shakier skim. “Pratt… Accepted.”

Next letter, I can hear my heart up in my brain, thrumming at the base of my spine as if asking to be freed. “University of Southern California…”

I felt my chest clench in pain. “Denied.”

“Fuck ‘em!” Melchior chuckled. When I looked up at him, probably looking close to faint, he raised his eyebrows as if to tell me ‘go on’.

“Arts Center….” A sigh of relief. Not everyone hated me. “Accepted.”

A cheer among the boys, my hands still trembling as I reached the last letter. “CalArts….”

I looked and looked for what felt like years for my light in the letter. “Accepted.”

Seeing the grin that was plastered on my face, they assumed that was my top pick and began cheering wildly. “CalArts?” Georg asked, standing to bring me into a tight hug. “Where’s that?”

“Los Angeles.”

Melchior smiled, slapping my back and joining me on my bed. “Is it a good school?”

“One of the best.”

“The Yale of Arts!” Georg proclaimed, boldly but blindly. 

I shrugged a response and felt Melchior lean against me, his hand patting my knee like a proud father. “Knew you would, buddy. They’d be dumb to say no.” After my celebration died, our eyes all drifted to Moritz, who had been sitting almost silently, staring at the letters in his hands. All of them already opened. 

“Moritz, what the hell, man?” Melchior stood, waving his hand wildly. “You didn’t wait to read them with us? I thought that was the plan-”

“Doesn’t matter,” Moritz’s vice whined, close to shattering against us. “They said no.”

“Who did?” Georg joined Melchior standing. 

“All of them.” When Moritz finally looked up at us, we could see tears welling up in his deep eyes, threatening to pour out any moment. 

For a few breaths, none of us moved. Just stared at Mortiz like he was a bomb about to explode. Sure, we were afraid. None of us had seen another guy cry like that. Not since we were young at least. And never someone we were friends with. Faraday guys like to bottle it up, keep that emotion close and closed until they burst at the seams. 

Melchior was the first to speak as he bent down to collect all of his discarded letters. “Fuck this. Give me your letters, Moritz.”

Moritz tentatively handed them over. The second the letters hit Melchior’s hand, he stormed into our bathroom. In strong, smooth movements he emptied our wastebasket into the larger trash can in our bedroom and sat the small, metal basket in the center of the tile floor. He tossed the pile of letters into the wastebasket. 

“Come on!” He yelled to us, holding his hand out for more letters. Georg was the first to move, giving Melchior a few of his letters. Not the Cornell one though. I saw him skillfully tuck that away before Melchior seized the papers. I followed him, doing the same, shoving my CalArts letter into the pocket of my khakis. Melchior tossed them in as well before pulling a lighter from his front pocket.

“Why do you have that?” Georg poked fun at him as the four of us gathered around the paper filled basket. 

“For this reason,” Without a second though, he bent down to press the flame he flicked to life to the top envelope. The hot orange flame lit without hesitation and traveled down the pile of papers and yes and no and accepted and denied as we stood around it in silence, staring into the crackling wastebasket. 

“Thank you…” Moritz’s voice cracked just beneath the sound of the flames. When I turned to look at him, his red tear-stained face is looking down at his feet. His whole body shook with sniffles as he repeated, his voice ghost like in our paper funeral. “Thank you… Thank you so much…” 

The paper in my pocket felt like it was burning all day, even if Melchior hadn’t pressed his lighter to it. It burnt with joy, my hand itching to pull it out and reread it over and over. It burnt with everything I had ever wanted to be when I was a child staring up at my Van Gogh poster. But I didn’t take it out. Like I was afraid if I looked at it too much it would fade or crumble.

Not until dinner, when i reached the table where Hanschen had been sitting alone.His empty plate had been pushed aside and replaced with his copy of Hamlet, much nicer and better made than the copy I received from the library. 

“Ernst,” He mused when I sat across from him, pushing his glasses up from the top of his nose. “I haven’t seen you all day. How was your day? Have you finished act two yet?”

Wordlessly, I placed the letter on the table between us, sliding it towards him. After a few moments of silence and Hanschen reading the paper, his mouth silently saying the words as he read them, he looked back at me, his polite smile transforming into a full faced grin. “Oh Ernst. This is amazing.”

I nodded, wanting more than anything to lung across the table and pull Hanschen, my Hanschen, into a hug so tight we both forget to breathe. And i could tell he wanted the same, his hand jerking forward as if to reach out to hold me. But he stopped himself, instead smiling and shaking his head in awe. “I knew you would, Ernst. I’m so happy for you. You worked so hard too.”

“What about you?” I asked once my joyful silence subsided. “ You must’ve received a letter by now.”

He nodded, “I received my last one on Tuesday.”

“Why the hell haven’t you told me yet?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want to be seen with me again. Not close,” He rolled his eyes, looking out at the few other boys still lingering around the dining hall. “After Melchior threw his fit I was surprised you weren’t scared of me again. Afraid you’d catch the queer disease.”

“I’m not dumb enough to run away from you again, Hanschen.”

He looked back at me, his eyes looking at me and over me like I was made of gold. I felt perfect when he looked at me like that. Like he adored the words I spoke and the ground I walked on. Like he adored me the same way I adored him. “I got into Duke.”

I wanted to throw the table and kiss him so hard it hurt. I wanted to throw my hands into the sky and thank the lord for making his dreams come true. I wanted to hold him to my chest and push his hair behind his ear and tell him how perfect he was. I wanted to cry because North Carolina is a long way from Los Angeles and very mile I thought of was another song of pain in my chest.

But instead I nodded, smiling at him the same adoring smile. “Of course you did.” I whispered so no one else could hear but Hanschen sitting across from me in his rosy cheeked happiness. “Of course you did, my brilliant, beautiful boy.”


	25. Chapter 25

Hanschen fit well into his home. I didn’t know what I expected it to look like until I entered the little cottage tucked behind Main Street Sweets, so small I would have missed it if Hanschen hadn’t lead me down the alley parallel to main street that opened up to a lush green yard and the Rilow home. 

It was warm inside, smelling of vanilla and cinnamon that I finally realized was the trademark scent Hanschen’s sweaters carried. The living room, with its low ceilings and ancient creaky wood floor was filled with comfortable, overstuffed furniture and overflowing bookshelves. He fit in well there, shucking off his uniform tie the second we entered.

“It’s not much but, I wanted you to see it,” He helped me out of my jacket, throwing it over the back of a mossy green couch. “This is where I grew up so I thought you might as well see it yourself.”

I turned around, trying to take in everything. It was tight, but not cramped. It felt like hot cocoa and a good nap in that house. “I love it.” I wandered deeper into the living room, pointing to the wall covered in books. “These all yours?”

“My dad and Thea read a lot too. But this is a fair amount of my collection.” He pointed to the messy desk in the corner of the room. “That’s my mom’s section of the house. But she’s out of town. She and dad got in a fighting match last night and when that happens she runs off for a while.”

When my only response could be staring in silence, Hanschen laughed it off like nothing. “They should have divorced a while ago. But there’s the store. And me and the twins.” He shook his head, wandering towards the bottom of the narrow staircase extending up towards the second floor. “They think we haven’t noticed. But we have. So it’s all pretty funny.”

“That doesn’t sound funny,” I followed him up the stairs to the small, lounge area. There was probably a couch beneath a hulking pile of girls clothing, shoes, jackets, high school textbooks, and backpacks. 

“Oh, it’s the sad kind of funny,” He looked around the room with a sigh. “Sorry about the mess, the girls have a habit of not picking up after themselves.”

There were little signs on the three doors at the top of the stairs, the kind your relatives special order for you when you’re a kid. I thought only families in catalogs had them, but I was proven wrong by the Rilows. The signs reading ‘Thea’ and ‘Melitta’ were pink and flowery, hanging from pretty pink ribbons on the first two doors. Then, on the far side of the lounge, was the blue, football covered sign reading ‘Hansi’.

“‘Hansi’?” I laughed, approaching the door and pointing at the frilly calligraphy. “Who’s Hansi?”

“No one called me Hanschen until I got to Faraday,” He said, leaning beside me against the door. “But when I got there it seemed a little too… childish, I guess. It didn’t fit coming out of the mouths of the intelligent crop in there.”

“I was Ernie to everyone until I got to Faraday,” I replied, causing Hanschen to giggle like a maniac as he pushed the door open.

“Ernie?” He laughed, leading me into the small, light blue room. The walls were filled with shelves, either stuffed with books or trophies that looked to be leading back to elementary school. Football, baseball, track, speech and debate, drama, academic plaques. If there was an award for anything, it seemed likely that Hanschen would get it. 

“Yeah Ernie,” I confirmed and sat on the small, unmade bed in the center of the room. “My grandfather’s name was Ernst, so I was Ernie. You know. So we don’t cause my confusion.” 

Hanschen moved to the desk in the corner of the room, the only other piece of furniture besides a dresser. “Well Ernie, what kind of music you want to hear?” I noticed that he was shuffling through a large stack of vinyl records sitting beside an old record player. 

“Whatcha got?”

He held up a few albums I couldn’t recognize the cover of. “Rock, blues, soul, jazz,” He set down one handful and started looking through another. “It’s all oldies so…”   
“So I don’t know any of it.”

“We can’t all listen to David Bowie entire discography and be content.”

“And The Smiths,” I pointed an accusatory finger. “I listen to them too.”

Hanschen hummed a little chuckle. “Huh. Variety.” He pulled a record from the stack. “How about Paul Anka?”

“Never heard of him.” I watched Hanschen expertly pull the vinyl from it’s sleeve and place it on the turntable, his movements so delicate and loving. 

“Well that’s a shame. His voice is amazing, one of those old crooners, you know. The first teen heartthrob.” He placed the needle on what I now saw was a “Greatest Hits” record. Pretty old fashioned doo wop bass and girls harmonizing. The kinda stuff you’d expect to play for the slow song at a fifties prom. “He was also my first crush.”

“What?”

“Mom used to play him around the house. Leave the albums out. And I’d just stare at his picture and listen to his voice… And that’s how I knew.”

The swaying beat kicked in and a smooth, deep male voice cracked through the speakers. 

_ “Put your head on my shoulder…” _

Hanschen nodded, content and turned to look at me over his shoulder. His eyebrows raised as if to ask: ‘See why?’

I could understand. 

_ “Hold me in your arms, baby.” _

Hanschen began to sway in place, just barely rocking himself from left to right, feeling the music run over him like a current. He looked so at ease, so beautiful, so eternal just swaying there. 

_ “Squeeze me oh so tight. Show me that you love me too.” _

Almost gliding across the floor, Hanschen approached my seat on the bed, his hand held out to me in an invitation. He raised his eyebrows again, waiting patiently.

“What?” I asked when the song moved to a soothing instrumental.

“Dance with me, Ernst.”

“To the guy you first jacked off to?”

_ “Put your lips next to mine, dear” _

He pushed his hand out to me one more time. “Yes. Dance with me.”

_ “Won’t you kiss me once, baby.” _

I took his hand, letting him pull me up to my feet. I leaned my forehead against his to close the few inches difference between the two of us. And even though I felt like I was bending in half to do so, I didn’t mind. 

_ “Just a kiss goodnight, maybe.” _

His free hand found it’s way down to my waist, his fingertips running little circles through my dress shirt. THe other held onto my hand, holding it so softly I would have thought it was a dream. He held me to gently, so sweetly. 

_ “You and I will fall in love.” _

My hand slowly moved from his shoulder to the top of his back, running my fingernails over his defined shoulder blades. 

_“You and I will fall in love_ ,” The female back up singers and Hanschen, ever so quietly, sang. Only then did I realize that he had been humming along as we swayed and I could feel that in his chest, pressed up against mine.

“Where’d you learn to dance, Hansi?” I muttered, although I would hardly call our swaying dancing. It was more holding each other with slight movement, an excuse to cradle each other there, in the middle of his childhood bedroom. 

_ “ People say that love's a game. A game you just can't win.” _

“School dances,” He responded. His head shifted to rest on my shoulder. What a cliche, I thought. I felt his lips against the sensitive skin of my neck. “I never danced with girls this tall though. Or girls who made me feel like how you make me feel.”

_ “If there's a way, I'll find it somebody.  And then this fool will rush in.” _

“How do I make you feel?”

_ “Put your head on my shoulder.” _

Silence for a moment or two. The music had built up into a powerful, sorrowful croon. The voice came through, desperate and beautiful. Hanschen’s grip on my hip tightened, pulling me even closer. 

_ “Whisper in my ear, baby.” _

“You make me happy, Ernst,” He said finally, his breath sounding hesitant and light. 

_ “Words I want to hear, tell me.” _

I was glad he couldn’t see my face because I felt my face and ears heat up bright red. “You make me feel,” He continued, “Like things are starting to make sense.”

_ “Tell me that you love me too.” _

“You make me happy too, Hans.”

_ “Tell me that you love me too.” _

Hanschen pressed a chaste kiss to my neck and continued his sway, squeezing my hand in reassurance, as if reminding me that he was here, alive, in my arms. Maybe he thought he was dreaming too. 

_ “Put your head on my shoulder.” _

“Hey, can I ask you something weird, Hanschen?”

“Anything.”

_ “Whisper in my ear, baby.” _

“Will you take my virginity?”

_ “Words I want to hear, baby.” _

I expected him to stop, to freeze. A part of me still expected him to call me disgusting and demand that I leave immediately. But he didn’t. I just felt him there, breathing against me and swaying so softly I had forgotten we were moving. 

“It would be an honor, Ernie.”

_ “Put your head on my shoulder.” _


	26. Chapter 26

“This is miserable,” Moritz's voice cracked beneath the annoyingly loud music. Something bubbly and light and popular so neither of us knew it. The auditorium was lit by twinkling christmas lights and little golden paper lanterns that made all the dancers glow. It was nice. I couldn’t imagine how bad this dance would be if it were put on by Faraday. But the girls at our sister school, Hawthorne’s School For Girls, made the room look gorgeous every year for Spring Fling. It was the only dance that Faraday boys were invited to, so very spring love sick boys in poorly fitting suits flooded the much newer, much nicer campus on the other side of St. Andrews.

And some boys made the most of it. Some boys spent the night dancing with the Hawthorne girls and laughing and falling in love, or at least in like. Melchior was one of those boys. The night was drawing to a close and he was still dancing with Wendla, her long, silky lilac dress flowing around them like a cloud of dreams. And of course he looked beautiful too, in his designer made tux and head of well maintained waves. I don’t think they sat down once that night. They spent it all together, being the object of envy for everyone in the room. 

“Is this your first time?” I asked Moritz, my companion at one of the sad, circular tables. The boys who didn’t end up like Melchior ended up like us, alone all night at the tables that dotted the edges of the room. The lonely tables, where boys regretted showing up and girls regretted not asking anyone to dance.

He shook his head, curls that we attempted to set down we’re now in complete messy rebellion. “I’ve been here every year. Haven’t danced at a single one.” 

“Well then thank god this is the last one.”

I had been asked to dance before. And I did, not well but I did. The girls who asked me never really wanted to though. They always asked because one of their friends was asking Melchior and didn’t want to do it alone. 

Hanschen didn’t have that problem though. He had come to sit with us a few times, but not for long. He was always swept up by a new girl, a beautiful girl in an equally beautiful dress would come by, batting her eyelashes and asking Hanschen the moment he sat down to get up again. And he would always kindly smile and join them on the dance floor, casting a look over at me as if to say “sorry” before joining whichever goddess had asked him.

Then, the last song started. Some old, beautiful music with a woman crooning about love among grand violins. All the couples on the dance floor came together, cradling each other in their arms and sharing this moment of beauty. I saw Melchior and Wendla in the middle of them all, their lips pressed together as they swayed.

Suddenly, a girl that must’ve come out of the shadows appeared beside our table, looking at Moritz with big eyes. She was a gorgeous black girl with a head of intricate braids going down to her waist. In a simple blue dress, she stepped forward and said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Excuse me, would you like to dance with me?”

I looked at Moritz, who was dumbstruck in silence. He looked back and forth from the girl to me rapidly before standing. “Yes, of course.”

I watched the two take to the floor, both too shy for their own good, but both smiling their happy rosy smiles.

I was glad someone could be happy tonight. But now it was just me and the little bowl of chocolates used for a centerpiece. 

“You look depressing.” Hanschen said as he approached the table, his eyebrow perched up like he was expecting something of me. But there was nothing I could offer besides a little shrug. He pulled out the seat and sat beside me, keeping up enough of a distance as to not cause any suspicion. It was what we were good at, a low profile. “You wanna get out of here?”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere.”

Immediately, I stood, abandoning the lonely table to follow Hanschen out of the auditorium. A few teachers standing in as chaperones watched us with squinted eyes as we bolted out of the school, a coy smile on both of our faces. 

“How was your night, Ernie?” He asked as we descended the front steps and into the small residential neighborhood of St. Andrews. The quiet streets were lit only by dim street lights that dotted the sidewalk. Hands stuffed in our pockets, Hanschen and I began the long walk towards Faraday.

I hummed out a dissatisfied grunt. “It was fine. How was your night?”

“Fine.”

“You looked like you were having more than just a fine time.”

Hanschen looked over at me, his eyebrows raised in confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you danced with like fifteen girls!” I raised my voice a bit, which meant Hanschen suppressing me quickly with a shush. 

“Ernie,” He muttered, checking over his shoulder for anyone else that left early. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

“No I'm not,” I lied, feeling his eyes, greedy, bright, and blue, staring at me as we walked. “There’s nothing to be jealous of.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked for what felt like the millionth time. 

I watched as he shucked off his suit jacket, carrying the slick black jacket over his arm. His dress shirt fit tightly around his amazing shape. As Ispoke he went to work loosening the thin black tie around his neck. “It means that we’re not anything. Not really at least. So you have the right to dance with whoever you want. I have no reason to be jealous.”

“We’re nothing,” He sounded a bit hurt. But not too much. He began to unbutton the top few buttons of his shirt.

“Not entirely nothing. We’re just not anything real.”

“This feels real to me.”

“Well what’s real feel like?”

He held out a hand to me, ushering me to take it, which I did with joy. “It feels like this.”

I took his hand, my fingers lacing into his and my thumb running over his knuckles. I just thought he was so lovely there, golden lamplight off of golden skin. “You think you could fall in love, Hansi?” I asked, my throat feeling tight as I spoke. 

“Right now?”

I shook my head and clarified. “No like, eventually. Could you fall in love one day.”

He shrugged and looked at me, “I don’t know. Could you?”

“Yeah, I think I could.”

And that was it. I didn’t tell him that I said that because I was already falling in love with him. I didn’t say anything. We just continued walking, my hand in his, until he said, “My old school isn’t too far from here. We should swing by.”

I followed him down the few blocks to the campus, where we had to hop the fence to get to the small, squat, brick school building. It was a small school, with one main building, a few side buildings, a theatre, and a massive football field in the back of the campus that Hanschen was immediately gravitated towards. Under the light of the floodlight that were kept on around the campus, which was decorated in red and gold. Their roadrunner mascot was painted, printed, and written all around the campus, which was strange to me because I don’t think Faraday even had a mascot. If we did, it wasn’t paraded around our buildings like the people who founded our school had a very specific animal fetish. 

“This is it!” Hanschen announced as he helped me over the little half fence that lead to the obscenely large football field. Surrounded by a brand new track, the astroturf on the field was bright green and wet with midnight March dew. Away from the constant light of the main campus, the field was illuminated only by the full moon above us. 

“What is it exactly?” I asked as we wandered into the fake grass. 

He gestured wildly to the rows upon rows of bleachers. “This was my life for five years. Since middle school I spent every single Saturday here, practicing to get into JV. And then to Varsity, then to keep a hold on my position.”

I couldn’t imagine Hanschen as a football player. He seemed to me to be the sweet, sensitive literature student with some sort of hidden athletic talent in Lacrosse. He was never the brutish, dumb jock that all the movies made football players out to be. At least not anymore. 

I was happy to know that he was different. 

Hanschen laid his jacket down on the grass, patting the earth besides him to gesture for me to to the same. I sat my jacket down and found myself sitting beside him, leaning against him in our private darkness.

“You don’t like the girls you danced with tonight, do you?”

Hanschen shifted a bit, letting out a discontent hum, “You’re not still on that, are you?”

“I’m sorry I’ve just been thinking!” I squeaked out, leaning down to rest my head on his shoulder. We both stared into the starry sky as if expecting to see something out there. “You’d feel the same way if I was dancing with a million different girls all night.”

“I don’t get jealous,” He hummed. “I don’t need you to be all mine. It’s impossible really.”

“What do you mean?”

Hanschen took a few breaths before sitting up, pointing at the bleachers on home section, a behemoth of metal stands that were now left abandoned. “Right there is where Bobby found Adam and I. We tried to be each other’s one and only. Just ended up with me falling for him hard, like a jackass. So I got sloppy. Forgot to keep things secret. And Bobby already knew about me being gay so when he noticed…” He shook his head, leaning back on his elbows to stare wistfully at the violet sky. “We were dumb. Fell hard and hit the ground hard.”

“Is that why you won’t fall in love?”

“I didn’t say I won’t, “ He muttered. I watched his pale shadowed lips move with percision. “I’m just saying it’s hard to keep your head above water when you fall in love. Hard to keep things secret.”

“I wish we didn’t have to keep secrets,” I whispered, finding myself leaning down to press my lips to his. He moved a gentle hand to cup my cheek, sweet and gentle. 

Eventually, I found myself on top of Hanschen, kissing him hard on top of our now damp jackets. His hands made quick work pulling off my tie and unbuttoning my dress shirt. He untucked my shirt with the other hand, his nails making little dents in the small of my back. 

“You know what would be poetic justice,” Hanschen pressed his lips to my neck, pushing aside my shirt collar desperately. “If we fucked on the football field.”

“Or if we egged Bobby Maler’s house.”

“Or both?”

“Both sounds nice.”


	27. Chapter 27

By late March, the temperature had risen enough so we could lay out in the grass around the cove, our uniforms untucked and our textbooks abandoned on the ground a few feet from where Hanschen and I lay. A cool breeze ghosted over the waters and across our faces, turning lips and cheeks chapped pink. Hanschen’s cool fingers danced across my scalp, playing with strands of brown waves gifted to me by my father, at least that’s what I was told. He absentmindedly tucked a few strands behind my ear, humming to himself, content with my head resting in his lap as he sat, propping himself up in the grass.

“I could do this all day,” I shifted a bit, feeling the sun’s rays wrap around me like a blanket. 

A content grunt and Hanschen’s hand ghosted across my cheek. “I wish I could. But dinner’s soon.”

“You could if you came home with me for spring break,” My suggestion was met with a shrug. I only brought it up once or twice but Hanschen made it seem like it was all I was talking about. “Come on,” I boosted myself up to look at him. “Mom would love to have you over. Why not?”

“You told your mom about us?”

“Not everything,” Hanschen rested his head against my shoulder. He smiled a small smile as I continued. “But you should still come out and spend break with me. It would be nice. My mom’s always busy so we’ll have a lot of time alone?”

He raised an eyebrow. “A lot of time alone, huh?”

“Fuck off,” I punched his leg weakly. “I just want to spend time with you outside of school. So we can like… lay around all day or watch movies or listen to music-”

“You want me to do nothing?” He questioned, his fingertips moved in little circles around the top of my thigh. 

“I just want to spend nice domestic time with you,” I replied. “Making dinner and taking naps and reading together in silence. The little things.”

“One day.”  
“When we live together?” I continued the fantasy, staring up at the cloudless sky. Back when this idea first bloomed, we stepped around the idea. Maybe one day, we’d say, we’d be all alone together. But we knew what it meant. 

It meant we didn’t want to say what we wanted, but we both knew it was to be together, in peace, and in each others arms for as long as possible. 

“Yes, when we live together,” He mused. “In that little apartment.”

“With baby blue walls.”  
“And your plants.”

“And your books.”

Hanschen placed a content kiss on my cheek. We hadn’t discussed how this life together would work when we were going to schools across the country, but I don’t think either of us wanted to think about it too much. “And we can watch shitty late night TV until we fall asleep.”

“And I’ll have you model for my drawings.”

“And I’ll start playing the piano again.”

I ran my fingers through his already perfectly misplaced blond hair. “If the apartment is small, how are you gonna fit a piano in there?”

“Don’t become the realist here, Ernst,” He laced our fingers together. “That’s my job. You keep your pretty head in the clouds for me.”

I nodded, leaning back to lay in the grass wordlessly. In a happy silence, Hanschen laid beside me, our hands clasped between us in the hidden grass, so if anyone walked by, all they would see is two friends enjoying a warm Spring day. And that’s all we were. 

"Ernst. Get up. Come here. Now."


	28. Chapter 28

Pebbles crunched and skittered beneath my feet as I stood. Rushing closer to the shore, I saw Melchior standing on the slope a few yards from us, glaring down at us from his grassy vantage point. Hanschen had moved even faster than me, sprinting down to the edge of the water. 

“Ernst,” Melchior repeated, his fists clenched at his sides. “Come here.”

“What do you want?” My voice came out shaky, nothing like how I wanted to sound. I didn’t know exactly why, but I was scared. And Hanschen was too. Something in me was telling me to run.

He took a few steps towards us. “I want to go. Let’s go, Ernst.”

Hanschen scrambled to get further away as Melchior got closer. Only then did I follow Hanschen’s eye line to Melchior’s fists, one of which was closed tightly around something solid and large. A rock. “I’m fine here,” I insisted. “I’ll stay.”

My but wheeze for breath defied the confident tone I was attempting. From his free hand, Melchior pointed at me. “Ernst, you’re coming with me. People are gonna start talking soon.”   
“Talking about what?” 

He shook his head and then in a hushed voice replied. “About what I just saw.”

“Only if you tell them.”

“Think I won’t?” The silence around the pond was deafening. No one moved, not Hanschen, not Melchior, not me. 

We all stood, staring at each other in a standoff, daring each other to move, to run, to stand up to Melchior. He was smaller than me, but here he felt fifteen feet tall, looming over us with the threat to end my life in his hands. 

Melchior took another step, not breaking his glare. “This is your senior year, Ernst. I wouldn’t ruin it by making the whole school think you’re a fag.”

“But I am.”

“Bullshit!” He spat, his face turning an angry red. “Don’t fucking say that.”

“It’s true.”   
“Shut up, Ernst,” He extended the free hand to me, the other still clenched in a threatening fist. “Shut up and come here and we won’t talk about this.”

“I want to talk about this!”

Melchior’s hand shot out suddenly, grabbing for my wrist and attempting to pull me towards him, away from the shore and away from Hanschen, who stood still but perched, ready to use those skills from years of football to run back up the hill as fast as possible. 

But there wasn’t safe there. No where was safe now. Not with the threats on Melchior’s tongue. He didn’t need to say it. We knew what he would do as soon as he got the opportunity. We stopped being who we wanted to be the moment he came over that hill. Hanschen was no longer new kid Hanschen, good at lacrosse Hanschen, top of the class Hanschen. And I couldn’t be funny Ernst, tall Ernst. Not anymore.

Melchior stamped “FAG” on us both in bright red ink.

I yanked my hand away. “Don’t fucking touch me, Melchior.”

“You’re disgusting. You know that?” Melchior stopped, turning to look at me like I had somehow betrayed him. “You fucking disgust me. And you’ll disgust everyone else.”

“Ernst go.”

Hanschen’s voice was unfamiliar. I wouldn’t have known it was him if I didn’t see him, his lips moving, his eyes cast down to the ground. He sounded broken. Like he was surrendering a battle he never even got to fight. He shook his head, circular glasses falling low on the bridge of his nose. 

I reached out, trying to grab any part of Hanschen, his hand,his arm, anything that would get me closer to him, to tell him that I’m here. “I’m not going anywhere, Hanschen.”

“It’s better if you go.”

But I stood still, keeping my eyes on Hanschen like if I looked away he’d disappear. Hanschen was made of mist, of moonlight. He was barely there and if I squinted hard, I could see right through him.

I was so afraid he was going to disappear like he did from Trinity. Just cease to exist anywhere near me. And I couldn’t bear the thoughts. “I’m not going I don’t care what you say,” I insisted, waiting for him to look up and make the eye contact I craved. “I’m not going to abandon you, Hans.”

“I can’t believe I was friends with you for so long,” Melchior tossed the rock up a few times, catching it over and over. It was a threat. Everything about him. His eyes, his stance. “Ernst, let’s go or else.”

“Or else what?” I raised my voice a bit, not caring if anyone heard, not Melchior or any other boys or God. “What are you going to do, Melchior? Tell everyone?”   
Another toss and he paused, looking between Hanschen and I with eyes like slits. “I don’t know. But you’re gonna fucking regret this.”   
I shook my head. Silent, I held my ground against Melchior. His eyes promised to cover every hill, every hallway, every classroom, and every dorm room until I died. Or dropped our. Whichever came first. 

“Have a good night, you two,” His voice became suddenly soft, like an old friend poking in just to say hi. The rock in his hand was hurled down at our feet with a silent rage and with that, he turned, gone. Going back up the way he came. He didn’t look back once, not to invite me to come along or to throw one more insult. 

He just walked back up to the campus, where I knew I wouldn’t be able to step a peaceful foot again.

Hanschen and I watched this in silence, knowing and appreciating that this was the calm.

“Why didn’t you run?” Hanschen asked, his voice getting lost in the sound of the breeze over the water. He was made of wind now, and I watched him slip away from me. 

“Did you want me to run?”

“You should have.”

I reached out and finally, Hanschen took my hand, squeezing my palm and rubbing my knuckles in a promise.

He knew about the storm. 

  
  



	29. Chapter 29

As the sun came out over Faraday, I seemed to become a shadow. Rumors spread like wildflowers over the hills surrounding campus. Melchior had been fast to set his fires, not too big to manage though. He left room for deniability. It’s wasn’t that Ernst Robel and Hanschen Rilow were fags, it was just that they might be. 

If I wanted to come crawling back to Melchior, he could silence the rumors. He just liked the leverage.

But even with the whispers of “maybe” and “I heard” and “he said”, things had changed. I wasn’t popular before, but I wasn’t ignored either. I wasn’t blatantly avoided like I was now. 

In classes there was always a one desk barrier between the rest of the students and me. No one even bumped into me in the hallways. 

Maybe it was because Melchior had excommunicated me from his clique that I had become a nobody. Or maybe they were afraid to catch the queer plague.

Hanschen was quick to disappear in all of this, not even daring to give me a look in class or a smile during meals. He sat alone at one table and I sat alone at the other. 

We couldn’t even me alone together. That would only fire up suspicions even more. 

So we let the space sit between us, dense and thick. I couldn’t remember the last time I had kissed him, or looked him in the eye, or felt his smile warm my skin. Melchior had forced us to become strangers overnight. 

But “they might be” became “I know they are” fast. 

“I’m sure he’ll back down, Ernst,” Georg tried to assure me one night, when he and Moritz sat on the opposite side of the room from me. They watched me from Mortiz’s bed, eyes following me like I was an animal in a zoo enclosure. “Just go tell him you’re sorry and he’ll take it all back.”

“But I’m not sorry,” I didn’t look up from my homework, cramming for the big German test before we got out for break. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction that looking at them would bring. 

Uncomfortable, Moritz got up and paced over to the window, fiddling with the blinds as Georg continued. “Come on, Ernst. This is stupid. There’s no reason for everyone to be turning on you like this! All over some dumb fight you had with Melchior.”

“Is that what he told you it was?”

They were quiet, silently looking at one another with faces I knew were painted with confusion. “Well what really happened then?” Moritz asked.

I continued to stare at the pages of my German textbook, not even reading anymore, just glaring in a blank rage. “Nothing.”

There was quiet for a few more moments, filled with what I assume was Georg and Moritz exchanging worried glances. Suddenly, Georg stood, taking a few steps towards me. But not too close. No one ever got too close. “Listen, Ernst. We don’t have to be talking to you. No one else is. We’re here for you.”   
“Then why are you still here? Cause I don’t want you to come here just to pity me.”   
“I don’t pity you.”   
“Then why are you here?”

Georg and Moritz look at each other again before Georg let out a disappointed sigh. “I don’t know. I thought that maybe you weren’t beyond saving.”

“I don’t want anyone to try to save me,” I set my book down to look at him, really look at him. I saw those dumb glasses sitting crooked on his nose, his beady eyes sitting behidn the lenses and staring me down. He seemed confused. I think I would be too. 

“Then why the fuck are you pulling this stunt?” His voice was venomous, disgusted.

If only he knew.

I shook my head and watched Georg’s face turn pink with frustration. “I can’t believe you’re pushing everyone away like this. It’s like you don’t even want people to like you anymore. It’s like you want people to believe that you’re…”   
“Say it.” 

Both he and Moritz stared at me in wide eyed disbelief. When both were wordless, I continued. “And I don’t want the people here to like me. That would just be selling my soul to a group of rich, hormonal, assholes.”

Georg didn’t say anything else. Just glared at me and left, I could hear his heavy footsteps going further and further down the hall. 

After an air of stale silence, Moritz turned away from the window, leaning up against the wall with a small shrug. “I still don’t believe it’s true, Ernst. I still think you’re pretty cool.”

“What if it was?”

Moritz took a few steps towards the bed before pausing, rocking on his heels as he thought. His words seemed to hesitate there on the tip of his tongue. “Well I wouldn’t really care. I still think you’re pretty damn cool either way.”

The next day, I came home from class to find Moritz’s side of the room completely empty. Everything he owned had seemingly disappeared. The only proof that he had even existed was a note left on his now empty mattress with the scribbled words: _‘my mom heard the rumors and requested that i moved rooms. i’ll see you around.’_   
  



	30. Chapter 30

**“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,**

**I have forgotten, and what arms have lain**

**Under my head till morning; but the rain**

**Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh**

**Upon the glass and listen for reply,**

**And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain**

**For unremembered lads that not again**

**Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.**

**-Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1920”**

The poem had found itself on my doorstep early one Wednesday morning, before the rest of the world could rise and judge the little folded note left on my doorstep. On the other side, written in Hanschen’s capitalized scrawl: “ **MISSING YOU ENDLESSLY. WANT TO HOLD YOU AGAIN.”**

I read the piece  over and over, analyzing each curve and line of his writing. Thinking over how long it had taken him to write each line, how long he had been thinking of me as he copied it. 

Between classes that morning, I slipped a similar note between his door and the door frame, a much less spectacular note reading: _“Soon.”_

On the back a series of incoherent doodles of hands, lips, and shapes that were neither body or line. It was what I saw when I closed my eyes and let my mind wander to Hanschen Rilow, perfect and golden and lovely. 

He showed how he cared in words, I showed mine in meaningless scribbles. It felt unfair to him.

Still, I got a note before dinner. 

“ **THIS IS BULLSHIT. YOU’RE ALL I WANT.** ” Paired with the writing on the back

**“I watched thee when the foe was at our side**

**Ready to strike at him, or thee and me**

**Were safety hopeless rather than divide**

**Aught with one loved, save love and liberty.**

**-Lord Byron, 1816”**

My response came before curfew. _“Run away with me.”_

**“I WOULD IN A HEARTBEAT.”**

_ “Promise?” _

**“I WOULD.”**

_ “We’ll have the apartment with baby blue walls and books and piano.” _

**“I’LL PLAY MUSIC ALL NIGHT.”**

_ “Sing me to sleep.” _

**“SOON.”**

_ “Run away with me.” _

I waited a week to see Hanschen up close again. I took the opportunity as we shuffled out of Macroeconomics, watching Hanschen from the corner of my eye slowly pack his backpack until he was one of the last people out of the classroom. I couldn’t look at him straight on, but I knew that he was peering at me too, just from above the lenses of his glasses. 

He left the room slowly, his pace ushering me to follow. Not too close, a foot or two of separation between us, walking beside him at a snail's pace down the steadily emptying hallway. 

With both of our eyes cast down to the floor, he spoke in a voice barely audible. “I want you to come up and sleep with me again.”

“I’d give anything,” I sniffled, keeping my eyes locked on my dress shoes stepping over ancient stone. “I’m serious about running away, Hansi.”

“No you’re not,” He hissed, beginning the slow journey down the stairs to the steady growing loudness of the dining hall. The stairwell was busier, so we had to drop our voices.

I whispered from a step or two behind him. “How do you know I’m not serious?”

“That would destroy everything you’ve worked for.”

“It’s worth it.”

At last, the first glimpse. A shocked expression from over his shoulder that quickly turned back to the steps below us. “Ernst, you’ve gone crazy.”

“Think about it.”   
“Don’t act like I haven’t been thinking about it,” He shrugged a hopeless shrug, his voice rising just barely before bringing it back to a hiss, darts coming out instead of words. “I think about it every day, every time I see you I think about it. You’re not the only one suffering here. But I’m not going to go crazy because of it.”

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, now staring straight forward at the open doors leading to the dining hall, where shouting and conversation echoed over old stone and high ceilings. There, I paused as well, finding my place just beside him, also gazing into the gaping maw of lunch time. But no one seemed to be staring back. 

“This place is driving me crazy, Hansi.”

A moment of silence. Then, a sigh. I could feel his energy beside me disappear. “Me too, Ernst. I can’t wait for it all to be over.”

“And we can be together.”   
“Together.”

“Would you run away with me, Hanschen?”

Nothing but the echoes of the dining room. Hanschen took a step towards the doors, as if he were going to disappear into the mass of boys and once again fade into nothing but a door for me to slip notes to. But he stopped, turning just barely so I could see the side of his face, his profile catching and keeping my gaze through the soft, fuzzy light filtering through thick windows. 

He was more beautiful than ever before, his defined jaw clenching in defiance before releasing as he said, clear as day, in a voice that sounded like he was praying, “I think I would, Ernst. Maybe in another life.”

And with that, he was gone, trudging alone in the adolescent battle field. I could no longer follow him. Not into that dining hall, and not through this hell created by our peers.

I had to lead.

That night the note I left at Hanschen’s doorstep had no yearning doodles or half hearted scribbles, but a promise. A promise in the form of words meticulously copied from one of the books Hanschen loaned me before we were put under lockdown. 

_ “ i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)  _

_ i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) _

_ and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant _

_ and whatever a sun will always sing is you _

_-e.e. cummings, right now”_

  
  



	31. Chapter 31

It was hard to drag the red Schwinn up the hill beside me without crumpling the tickets. But I managed to get it back to Faraday with only a few sideways glances. But that’s all I got nowadays, crooked stares and question marks.

Getting up the stairs in Chauncey was a struggle but no one was there to see me fumble my way up to the second floor. Everyone was still at dinner, celebrating the last meal between them and two weeks of freedom.

Except Georg. He always thought those big dinners were a load of bullshit.

He also couldn’t have gluten and tonight’s menu was burgers.

“Ernst?” 

He looked confused when he opened the door to me, breathless but focused in the hallway. I took a step into the room i had dared not entered for almost a month. “Hey, can I come in?”   
He stepped aside and I wandered into the messy room, the prized bike at my side. With a glance around, I noticed Melchior’s side of the room cluttered with filled notebooks and posters of rock bands I could never get into, but no life. Thank God he was gone. 

It wasn’t that I was afraid of him, not anymore. Leaving took away all power he had. But I still couldn’t face him. I didn’t want him to see me go. He didn’t deserve to be a part of any goodbye.

But Georg on the other had.

“Did you win that?” He asked, closing the door behind me. He kept a distance, eyes flicking up and over me from behind his glasses. He was wary, which was understandable from where he was coming from. I was still a loaded gun to him, ready to aim and fire off a queer bullet. Or maybe an uncharacteristic spurt of violent rage. 

“Yeah, here.”

Holding out the bike to him, I watched Georg look at it, staring like he was trying to find the catch. When he looked back to me, I shrugged. “Remember back in October or whatever when I crashed your old bike? Here.”

“That was a while ago.”

“Just take the bike, Georg.”   
“I have a car back home.”

“Take the damn bike, Georg.”

Hesitant, he took ahold of the handlebars, admiring the candy apple red glisten. “Wow, Ernst. I don’t know what to say.”

“You’ll need it. For buzzing around Cornell.”

Georg looked back at me, studying me as if maybe I was a clone. Or a trick of the light. Then, he spoke suddenly, taking a step back and leaning against the wall. Finally, he wasn’t on edge. “Where are you going, Ernst?”

“How did you-”

“I have been by your side every day since we were fourteen. I know you, Ernst. And I know when you’re normal quiet Ernst and when you’re cryptic, about to disappear Ernst. You do it all the time when you’re about to hide away to draw. Or leave dinner early or….” He sighed, his shoulders shaking slightly in surrender. “Or when you used to leave to go see Hanschen.”

I nodded, wordless. Of course he knew. In hindsight, it was obvious. Even after Melchior demanded I stopped, I would continue with my almost nightly disappearances. Couldn’t study, couldn’t hang out, couldn’t do the regular dumb shit. Georg was never dumb. 

“I’d say that I’ve been your best friend since we were fourteen but… I’ve never been a good friend, huh? Much less the best.”

“Georg, of course you’re a good friend.”

He laughed a small chuckle, thin lips pursed in a reluctant smile. If this was still war, he had called a truce with the weak noise. “Don’t bullshit me, Robel. I know I’m spineless around you guys. I know I was never all that great. Don’t try to pretend like I was.”

I nodded again. There was nothing to say to truths. But after a silence, I added. “If you were a lap dog you were a fucking funny one.”

A laugh. A more comfortable one. One I could finally share.

“You know, I never thought you were all that bad,” Georg muttered when our chuckles died down. “Like… Not as bad as Melchior and all of them said you were. There’s nothing wrong with you or Hanschen. Everything went too far.”   
“Then why didn’t you say something?”

Georg looked around, not to avoid me, but to avoid himself. We both knew the answer, but kept it to ourselves, holding it close how closely we held who our crushes were back in middle school or the nightmares that kept us up all night. But he looked at me and nodded. Nothing you could say out loud. 

“Good luck, Ernst,” He said after a silent agreement was made. He leaned the bike aside and reached out a hand. “Call sometime.”

I took the hand to shake it and before I could think of anything else, we were hugging. A tight hug, with his sharp chin digging into my chest. God, Georg was a short bastard. 

“Yeah, I’ll call.”

And I was gone, back to the empty hallway.

The next day, students would be flooding out of the halls to head home for their spring break, to family or vacation. Most wouldn’t even realize the Hanschen and I were missing. Not until they all came back for the final few months and found our desks empty. Only then would they realize that we had escaped.

  
  



	32. Chapter 32

“Come in.”

Hanschen’s room was half empty, like mine. Gage made sure everyone knew that he was moving rooms once Hanschen Rilow was exposed as a queer. He, like most Faraday boys, would do anything to make it known he did not want anything to do with any homosexuals. 

His side was tidy, but not packed. Not like my room downstairs, shoved into suitcases waiting for me patiently at the door. His bed was still made like he expected to spend another night there, books were still out at his bedside as if he expected to come back to read them. He sat on the bed amongst it all, his feet tucked up beneath him and a notebook in his lap. 

“You haven’t packed?” I closed the door behind me, but still didn’t dare raise my voice too much. “We only have an hour until we have to leave, Hans.”   
“I’m not going.”

I laughed at first, praying that this was some sort of joke. That Hanschen would keep up this charade for a moment or two before laughing, taking me in his arms and kissing me before assuring that he would get to packing immediately and meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes. 

But he didn’t. He was still, nodding solemnly. If this was a joke, it was a bad one. 

“What? Why not?” I demanded, stepping forward. “This was the plan.”

“This was your plan, Ernst. Not mine. I’m staying.”

“But you agreed to it, Hanschen.” Finally he stood. He seemed smaller than before. Not in height, but in himself. A little less Hanschen than before. He was barefoot, his uniform khakis cuffed up, and a beige sweater from home obscuring any shape he might have had. His normally pleasantly messy hair was pushed up and back, like he had been pulling it back from stress for hours. He still attempted to stand tall, to demand the space he normally took. But it seemed that the month of constant fear had caught up to him, washing over him in a wave of anxieties.

This wasn’t my Hanschen.

“I agreed in hypotheticals,” He fumbled to run sweaty palms over the wool enveloping his body. “This won’t work in the real world. Our fantasies aren’t the real world, Ernst.”   
“But we can make this work.”   
“How the hell are you going to make this work?”

I reached out to touch him, my hand finding a home on his shoulder, which slumped and shrugged at the contact.  It was like my touch had made him shrink even more into himself. But he didn’t pull away. He had surrendered beneath my palm. 

“I swear to God I have some money saved up and we could-”   
“We’ll be high school dropouts, Ernst.”

My hand moved to cup his cheek, which he leaned into and against like I was holding him upright. “But you’re so brilliant, Hansi. We’ll make it somehow.”

“Not as far as we’d make it if we went to college.”

His lips pressed against the ball of my palm, a gentle kiss, so slight I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching his pained expression. It was like I was tearing him away from something.

It was like a goodbye.

“The people in those colleges are going to be just like the people there. They won’t understand either.” I pushed, but Hanschen’s sad face remained unchanging. Hesitantly, his eyes fluttered closed. “It’s not worth another minute of this bullshit.”

He pressed soft lips to my palm as he spoke. “Ernst. Be Realistic. Please.”

“This the reality I want.”

He sighed. “I want to go with you, Ernie, but-”

“Then do it.”

“But I can’t,” He pulled away, standing up straighter to look me in the eye. “I’m going to tell my father over break. He needs to know. Then I’m going to come back and work my ass off to graduate and get the hell out of her.”

“And get to Duke so you can start the whole act all over again there?”

He shrugged, a weak, tight smile on his face. “If that’s what I have to do.”

“To get where?” I reached out, grabbing at Hanschen’s hands wildly and holding onto them so tightly, like he was about to disappear. “To get to where I’m already going? To be free.”

“My parents-”   
“My Mom is going to be furious, Hanschen. But it’s worth it for my freedom-”

“My parents don’t love me like yours do!”   
After Hanschen’s shout, there was silence. I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice like that, especially not at me. He tore his hands from mine, taking a few steps back and running his fingers through his hair. He took a few deep breaths before looking back at me with nervous eyes. He must’ve seen how my body had tensed and shrunk away from him. “Ernst, my parents wouldn’t ever forgive me if I ran off with you. Your mother loves you enough that she would understand eventually. My family…”A deep, shaking breath. “I’d be dead to them. They gave everything to get me here and they’d hate me if I gave it up. Especially with another guy…”

A few more chest quaking breaths and he stepped forward, taking me into his arms. Kind and warm, his strong arms wrapped around me and for the first time in a month, I felt safe. Even though, as I tucked my face into his shoulder, I could feel welling tears threatening to spill, I felt safe. The door could be busted down, the windows smashed in, flood waters pooling at our feet, and in his arms I would feel safe. Nothing could touch me, protected in his tight hold. 

His fingertips ran over my shoulder blades, rubbing small, lazy circles. Like he was afraid a touch any less delicate would snap me in two, make me crumble like clay in his hands. I’m not sure when I began crying but i knew it was there, his arms cradling me and allowing me to fall apart just like that. It wasn’t loud, heaving sobs. Not yet. Those would come later when I attempted to forget about him. Now, it was just slow, dripping tears that came out in weak sniffles. Hanschen knew and immediately began cooing to me in his sweet, low voice. His scratchy and hushed tone made him sound like one of those crooners in his record collection that I was hoping he would pack. “It’s okay, Ernie. It’s okay…” A kiss was pressed to my temple. “Spend the night here. Please. I need to sleep next to you.”

Suddenly, I stood up, knocking him back a bit as I moved with a fury. “N-No!” I stammered out, violently wiping the tears from my bright red cheeks. “I’m going, Hanschen. I don’t care if I have to go alone.”

“Ernst it’s not safe alone. What are you going to do alone-“

“If it’s not safe then come with me!” I grabbed for his face, holding his cheeks in my hands and noticing the tears welling up in his eyes too. My own tears were now pouring freely down my face. “I’m begging you to come with me, Hanschen. Because I’m going either way.” 

My hands holding him steady, I stared into his eyes. Tearful and blue, almost grey in the harsh light, he stared back. No excuses, he looked me in the face and responded. “I wish I was as brave as you, Ernie.”

And with that, I let him go. Immediately I missed the feeling of my palm pressed to his face, the feeling of his warmth next to mine. I immediately missed Hanschen, even with him in the room. But I tore my gaze away from his beautiful, flushed face, and turned back for the door.

“Wait, Ernst. Don’t leave yet.”

Too late. My hand was on the doorknob when Hanschen grabbed my arm and forced me to turn. He stood before me, desperate fist clenching around the fabric of my hoodie. “Ernst, spend the night here. Please. Just one night. I’ll pay for your train in the morning if you sleep here tonight, I swear I’ll let you go. Just sleep next to me.” 

I managed to shake away his grasp and turn back to the door, the entire time his pleas filled the room. “Please, Ernie. Stay. Please stay. I can’t let you go yet. Just stay. Stay.”

When I touched the doorknob again, he turned me again. This time he held onto me by the shoulders, his hold on me slipping and yearning. He pressed his lips to mine in something that was less of a kiss and more of a desperate collision of his face to mine. He held me there by the shoulders, kissing me like it was the last few moments of the universe and I kissed him back because I knew it was.

I wanted nothing more than to stay there, wrapped up in Hanschen Rilow until the fading sunset outside turned to indigo skies and the stars I had been praying to would come out. 

But I pulled away, his hold on me loosening to just trembling fingertips on my chest. “I need to go.”

“Wait!”

Hanschen turned, running back to his bedside table, covered in a stack of books. He pulled one from the top, holding it out to me in one wild motion. It was a thin, yellow paperback with a cover full of illustrated wild flowers. Black print read: “Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay”.

I took the book hesitantly at first, running my palms over the wrinkled and worn cover. “How am I supposed to get this back to you?”

“I’ve already memorized my favorites.”

I looked at Hanschen, admiring the shine of the tears falling down the finely crafted angles of his face. After a nervous swallow, I summoned enough strength to push out the words that had been on the tip of my tongue since the first day he kissed me on rocky shore of the cove.

“I love you, Hanschen.”

“I wish I was as brave as you, Ernst.”

I nodded and opened the door. This time, he didn’t stop me. 

  
  



	33. Chapter 33

The train station was abandoned, almost ghostly empty. A few lonely passengers wandered about the station, waiting for their rides out of this little blip of a town. No one spoke to each other, no one asked why or how they got there. No one cared about the half dozen other stories floating around the Amtrak. They just read their papers, wandered the tile floors, studied the signs, all keeping to themselves. 

I still had the extra ticket in my pocket. Some part of me thought that maybe, if I was lucky, it would end up in Hanschen’s hands. 

I waited for almost half an hour outside of the station as the sky turned to black, my eyes trained on the street that I had walked down. A few times, I thought I saw him. Some spark of light looked like a head of perfect golden hair. The movement of passing cars looked like suitcases rolling down the sidewalk. I could imagine him, clear as day, rushing down the street to meet me, clamoring with overflowing suitcases. Breathless, I imagined pink-faced Hanschen swearing apologizes, his glasses threatening to fall off of his nose. I could feel the wrapping warmth of his arms around me, his lips pressing to mine and promising to follow me as loyally as I would follow him.

But it never happened. There was so joyful embrace, no loving promises. No Hanschen. I moved to enter the station alone when I spotted a familiar face.

A head of brown waves looked murky orange, lit up by the harsh yellow light of an overhead light. Melchior leaned against the wall separating the three or four ancient payphones outside of the station, holding the receiver to his ear. 

“Melchior?”

A sharp inhale and Melchior turned to look at me, his eyes wide. “Ernst!” He stammered out. “What are you doing here?”

Completely calm, I responded with a sigh. “I’m catching the train to New York.”

“But, school doesn’t end until tomorrow.”

I raised my eyebrow and nodded at his confused glare. I watched his face contort as he realized what I meant. “Oh, damn, Ernst,” He whispered, as if scared that the ghosts of the street would hear us. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”  
“It’s fine, I wanted to do this,” When I looked over at his pitiful eyes I added. “You didn’t push me out. You don’t have that much power over people, Melchior. You just made me realize a lot of things.” Melchior immediately looked away, embarrassed fear making his face stoic. “What are you doing here?”

He hung up the receiver with a shoulder-shuddering sigh. “I’ve been trying for the past hour to call my parents.”

“If you’ve been trying that long then maybe it’s broken.”

His chuckle was weak, lacking the spark and strength that his voice usually carried. “No… It’s not that. I just don’t know how to tell them.” Looking up at me, he continued. “Wendla’s pregnant. I gotta tell them.”

With that, he slid against the separating wall and sat on the cold concrete, his elbows up on his knees and his head falling into his hands. I could only stare at him, mouth agape at his desperate state. I had never seen Melchior so broken in all my years of knowing him. When his grandmother died, when he got dumped, when he failed the Chemistry class junior year. I had seen him sad, even devastated. But never defeated like he was now. A battle had been fought and Melchior was left, clinging to life on the frozen battlefield. 

“When did this-”

“At the Spring fucking Fling,” He hissed, his palms muffling the noise. “And getting rid of it isn’t an option. Wendla would never even consider it.”

“What are you gonna do?”  
He ran his hands through his hair a few times before starting. “I’m gonna marry her. As soon as we graduate. Her mother would die if we had this kid out of wedlock.”  
“Well what about Princeton?” As soon as I spoke, Melchior stood, furious eyes looking up to the sky, as if begging for mercy from a god he didn’t believe in. 

“Fucking Princeton...Princeton will have to wait!” He looked at me, sadness drooping at his eyes. “Wendla can’t go to Smith now too. Nobody gets what they want.”

Words faltered there, underneath the weight of the world that was coming down around Melchior. I watched the boy I admired most of my high school years crumple, weak and discarded. Wordlessly, I put one hand on his weak, slumping shoulder. Beneath my touch, life flicked back to Melchior, who’s tragic eyes looked up at me as if I were an angel. “Ernst…” He whispered, his voice barely finding any hold above the sounds of the evening. Then, he hugged me, his arms wrapping around me with such violence it almost knocked me to the ground. When I caught my balance, I slowly put my arms around the person who had spent the last few months attempting to ruin my life. “I’m so sorry.” He muttered into the cotton of my Faraday hoodie. “I’m sorry for everything. I shouldn’t have hurt you… I didn’t want to hurt you… I didn’t want to lose you…”  
“You haven’t lost me at all,” I said when Melchior pushed off, shaking his head in self-disappointment. “You showed me a lot, Melchi. Now I know the life I want to live.”

He looked at me for a moment of two, studying my face as if I had suddenly transformed into a different person completely. “I know I can’t make you stay but, I hope one day you can forgive me.”

A silent nod, I picked up my discarded suitcase. “Call your parents, Melchior. And tell Moritz goodbye for me.”

He nodded, watching me with faint breath as I turned to leave, abandoning my position of lap dog once and for all. I’m not sure if he ever waved, because I refused to look back as I made my way into the station. 

There was a bit of a struggle to get my bulky suitcase onto the train. The suitcase was sat haphazardly atop the small pile of luggage, bold letters still proclaiming “ERNIE” after all of these years. 

I joined the handful of other passengers in the passenger car, watching the few others with me go about their silent, lonesome business, reading, writing, thinking. I joined their silent loneliness, taking my seat against the window and digging through my backpack to find the thin yellow book Hanschen had pressed into my hands like it was a map to heaven. 

Flipping through the pages, one stood out, marked by large sharpie letters in the margin. Short, squat letters that I recalled from the words scrawled on the small note thrown to me read **“TO ERNST”** at the top of the page and **“-HANSCHEN”** at the bottom.

**“I think I should have loved you presently,**

**And given in earnest words I flung in jest;**

**And lifted honest eyes for you to see,**

**And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;**

**And all my pretty follies flung aside**

**That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,**

**Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,**

**Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.**

**I, that had been to you, had you remained,**

**But one more waking from a recurrent dream,**

**Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,**

**And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,**

**A ghost in marble ~~of a girl you knew~~**

**Who w ~~ould have~~ love ~~d~~ you ~~in a day or two~~.“**

Immediately, my eyes were drawn to the last two lines, where almost all the words seemed to be struck out by a black sharpie besides “Who”, “Loved”, and “You”. It took me a moment or two after that to realize that the scribble over the “D” in “Loved” was Hanschen replacing it with an “S”.

Unable to control myself, I felt the hot, frightened tears begin to trickle from my eyes as I mouthed over and over, “Who loves you...Who loves you… Who loves you…”

A jolt and the train began to move away from Faraday, carrying me as I choked on bitter tears among the uncaring passengers. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel "Try Again, and Again, and Again" currently being written


End file.
